Microchips in wheelie bins as recycling gets £2.8m overhaul

The Yorkshire Post has learned that Harrogate Council is set to agree to have the rubbish monitoring devices fitted into all of the new wheelie bins it is bringing in as part of a comprehensive shake-up of waste recycling.

The council also said it hopes the majority of households will now be able to have plastic bottle and cardboard kerbside collections next year, ahead of the original target of January 2013.

The cabinet member for the environment, Councillor Michael Harrison, has assured the district’s residents the microchips will not be used to punish people for not recycling properly, but are being incorporated into bins now in case the council wanted to adopt a reward scheme a few years down the line.

“It is not something we have got any particular plans to use,” he said.

“In the future years we would like to keep open the options of doing a recyling rewards scheme for the district and to be able to do that we have to be able to measure the type of recycling that people are putting out.

“Chips in wheelie bins is normal for councils but not every one is collecting the information.

“This is about a recycling rewards scheme, not punishing people – that has been outlawed by the Government. You cannot punish people for not recycling.”

Harrogate Council’s waste collection service has been heavily criticised after it emerged that recycling rates in parts of the district are as low as 28 per cent – nine levels below national targets – despite it being by far the most populous area in North Yorkshire with more than a quarter of the county’s residents.

It is far below recycling rates in Ryedale, currently the best-performing district in North Yorkshire, with a 52 per cent rate.

Last year, a petition of more than 1,000 names was collected demanding an improved service and the council has been inundated with requests from worried residents requesting better waste collection.

The bill for dealing with the amount of waste that Harrogate currently dumps into landfill is picked up by taxpayers across the county as paying the landfill tax is the responsibility of North Yorkshire County Council.

Coun Harrison said: “This is part of a major project and it will be January next year before we get the first rolled out.

“The majority of properties will be having cardboard and plastic collected by the end of next year.

“The decision to overhaul our recycling was a positive step and this will take time to roll-out.”

As part of the overhaul, which was agreed at a full council meeting in January this year, wheelie bins will also be introduced at more than 90 per cent of properties, while residents will see alternate weekly collections of rubbish and recycling.

The council plans to spend around £1.3m to purchase bins and vehicles as part of the £2.8m project, but will face considerably lower day-to-day costs than with the current scheme, saving a projected £160,000 annually by 2015/16.

North Yorkshire County Council chiefs confirmed efforts are under way to reach a target of recycling at least 50 per cent of waste in the county by 2020.

Although that is still far behind communities in Germany, Belgium and Italy who have managed to increase recycling rates to above 70 per cent.

Privacy campaigners have hit out at mounting “intrusion” by local authorities after data emerged last year showing the number of councils to have fitted hidden microchips in their residents’ bins has leapt by 62 per cent in just 12 months.

A total of 2.6m wheelie bins across the UK are believed to have been fitted with the devices in that period – at a cost of more than £1m.