18 DECEMBER 2006 - AS plans progress to provide greater capacity for residents' to recycle and reduce residual waste to come into effect from 2009, Harrogate Borough Council has unveiled plans to extend its current kerbside recycling and collection of green garden waste which will start next year.

 

The council is set to approve funding of £750,000 to extend kerbside recycling.  The first steps will be to expand the waste collection service from 1 April 2007 to 10,000 properties in Knaresborough.  This funding will also allow the council to provide a kerbside collection service from September 2007 for bottles, cans and paper to the district's urban and rural areas, which currently do not receive this service as well as the preparing for a further expansion of green waste collections from 2008.

 

This now means that from 2007, 30% of local residents will be able to put out garden waste at home and the box and bag kerbside recycling service will now be delivered to over 90% of homes. 

 

Councillor Richard Cooper, Cabinet Member for the Environment, will back these plans at a meeting of the council's cabinet on 13 December.  He said:  "While negotiations are on-going with North Yorkshire County Council to help us fund even better recycling facilities delivered directly to households, we want to do all we can to provide more support in the interim. 

 

"Our district is one of the largest in the country covering some 500 square miles.  Added to that, we have a broad mix of very rural areas and very tightly built urban areas.  We can deliver a service now to all but about 2500 of our 67,000 households.  This is for a variety of difficulties in gaining access to them.  We hope to address that in the future so that we get 100% coverage.

 

"I want to congratulate staff in our environmental management team who are doing a sterling job to bring in these schemes.  Our waste team always score highly in customer satisfaction surveys and it is a credit to both teams that this very difficult and complicated collection service is now being provided to just about to every household."  ENDS