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28
Mar 2022
Council could sell Harrogate district grass verge cuttings
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.
Three-year trial
The trials at about 20 locations across the county are set to last three years.
Following the authority significantly reducing the amount of verge mowing in 2015 to save an annual £500,000 as part of austerity cutbacks, grass cutting and verge management has continued to be one of the leading issues raised by residents.
With county council-funded cuts in urban and rural areas reduced to five and two per season respectively, the authority has been approached by several town councils seeking to enhance biodiversity in their communities.
Read more:
- Harrogate council to repeat Stray rewilding experiment
- Harrogate district residents’ chance to learn about new North Yorkshire Council
An officer’s report states while cut grass is currently left on the verges to decompose, the authority is preparing a proposal for funding from its Beyond Carbon programme to allow for a commercial cut and collect operation to be assessed, alongside identifying the “wider appetite for verge cutting material” from anaerobic digestion firms.
Cllr Don Mackenzie, the authority’s executive member for access, said although collecting the cuttings would cost more, the grass could be used at the Allerton Waste Recovery Plant near Knaresborough to generate electricity and make money for the authority.
He said:
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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