Households across the north will get an additional wheelie bin Highland Council targets recycling boost following successful £6.5m bid
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Starting from next year households across the Highlands will get an extra wheelie while parts of Ross and Cromarty, Nairn and Fort William will get two after Highland Council successfully bid for £6.5 million to boost recycling.
The communities and places committee welcomed the news as the view of the council is that it will hugely improve the quality of recyclable material that is processed by the local authority.
It means that the existing general waste green bin will be used to collect containers like plastic bottles, pots, tubs, trays, cans, tins, foil, and cartons while the blue bin will be used for paper and cardboard.
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So that entails the issuing of a new 180 litre household waste bin but for those areas – mostly Inverness – that enjoy weekly collections a new smaller 140 litre general waste bin will be issued.
A new collection rota will therefore also come into force with residual waste collected fortnightly as it is now but recycling will be collected through a “twin-stream” process on a four week rotation.
That means for week one there will be a residual (general) waste bin collection; week two fibre mix (paper, card); week three residual general waste collection again and in week four there will be a mixed recycling collection for containers.
On top of that, the weekly food waste collection service will be expanded beyond Inverness to include households within accessible areas across the Ross and Cromarty, Nairn, and Fort William areas.
The project will be phased in starting from spring 2024 to spring 2025 and will require funded provision of both internal and external food waste caddies and the additional vehicles required to service the areas.
So some areas will get two new bins, one for household recycling and one for food waste and all paid for through the £6.5 million from the Recycling Improvement Fund.
In addition, five rural areas – Fort Augustus, Kingussie, Lochinver, Kyleakin and Lochcarron – that are furthest from the existing recycling centres will get small domestic appliance recycling banks.
