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28
Mar 2022
North Yorkshire County Council will trial collecting the grass it cuts from verges, saying cuttings that have for years been left to rot away are “a potential revenue-earner”.
The council will examine the commercial demand for harnessing energy from the cuttings to boost the country’s electricity supply while also improving the biodiversity and appearance of its road network.
The authority has approved investigating the benefits of taking grass cuttings to one or more anaerobic digesters as it continues trials of alternate rural grass cutting regimes to identify ways it can help to enhance flora, while ensuring changes grass cutting regimes do not impact on highway safety.
It comes days after Harrogate Borough Council said it intended to repeat last year's experiment of leaving parts of the Stray to grow wild to encourage biodiversity.
The authority’s leadership believes that with the relatively simple change of collecting the cuttings they could see what was a lose-lose situation transform into a win-win one.
Cllr Mackenzie said:
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