Extra wheelie bin on way to every home in Badenoch and Strathspey
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Starting from next year all households across the Highlands will get at least one 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.
Members of the authority's communities and places committee welcomed the news at their latest meeting in Inverness.
The multi-million pound award is coming from the Recycling Improvement Fund run by Zero Waste Scotland, which is financed by the Scottish Government.
The aim is to slash materials that cannot be recycled and hugely improve the quality of those that can.
Breaking down the changes – the existing general waste green bin will now be used to collect containers like plastic bottles, pots, tubs, trays, cans, tins, foil, and cartons; the blue bin will collect paper and cardboard.
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 also come into force with general waste collected fortnightly as it is now but recycling will be collected through a “twin-stream” process on a four week rotation.
So in week one of the rota 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 a mixed (plastics) 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 whole project will be phased in starting from spring 2024 to spring 2025. It 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.
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.
