North Yorkshire Council has released more details of proposed changes to bin collections, which will see each household get three or four wheelie bins.

The Stray Ferret revealed last month the council plans to harmonise the waste collection services it inherited in 2023 when seven district councils, including Harrogate Borough Council, were abolished.

Under the new system, each household will have three wheelie bins and four if they pay for the garden waste service.

The blue bags and black boxes will no longer be part of the service.

The council has adopted the model currently used in the former Selby district, which it said in this report was “the most efficient and effective system”.

Although the new approach aims to save money, it will take more than a decade to recoup costs.

It will cost £8,080,000 to buy new bins, £1,300,000 for new vehicles and £200,000 on a ‘route optimisation’ strategy — a total of £9,580,000.

The council estimates the new service will save £561,000 a year, which means it would take 14.5 years to recoup the £9,580,000 implementation costs.

But it estimates this could be reduced to 11.5 years by generating further savings through “further efficiencies in vehicles and staffing, including reductions in hours and overtime as efficiency increases”.

The council plans to introduce a four-day working week for binmen as well as “unify working practices throughout 2025 including start and finish times”.

How it will work

Under the plans, the blue bags for recycling paper and card and the black mixed recycling boxes used in the Harrogate district will no longer be collected.

Instead, 240-litre wheelie bins will be used for everything.

Households will get:

1 Grey-lid bin for residual waste

2 Red-lid bins for dry mixed recycling

3 Blue-lid bins for paper and card.

4 Green-lid bin for garden waste (if they pay to subscribe)

There will be alternative fortnightly household recycling collections, one for paper and card and one for all other recyclable materials.

Fortnightly refuse collections will continue to take place, as will garden waste bin collections if people choose to subscribe to the service.

The harmonised service is due to be rolled out from 2027 to 2029.

Let’s Talk Rubbish

The council’s Let’s Talk Rubbish consultation, which received almost 10,500 responses, showed twice as many residents were happy with wheeled bins rather than boxes or bags.

Cllr Greg White, the council’s executive member for waste services, said:

The council's Conservative executive will be asked to inplement the changes on Tuesday, January 21.