'˜Three weekly bin collections aren't wanted'

New regulations last year state that there must be a separate collection of food waste and Director of Environmental Services, Aidan McPeake told members that Councils must provide receptacles to every domestic property for the separate collection of food waste from April 1st, 2017.

Currently a total of 7,155 out of Ballymoney’s 11,672 householders have brown bins for garden waste but no food collection bins.

Of Coleraine’s 30,000 households, just half have kerbside cadies for food collection.

Among Limavady’s 12,328 households, just over 9,000 have co-mingled garden and food brown bins.

Out of Moyle’s 6,818 households, 5.000 have co-mingled garden and food brown bins.

Mr McPeake gave the members four options to choose from:

OPTION 1: all households to have food and garden waste collected in 240 litre bin (standard household size). Fortnightly collection.

OPTION 2: All households to have food waste collected in kerbside caddies (weekly). All households to have garden waste collected in brown bins for 8 months of the year (fortnightly collection).

OPTION 3: Commingled brown bin (food and garden waste) collection to urban areas only collected fortnightly. Food caddy collection to rural areas collected weekly.

OPTION 4: Separate food collection to all households. Garden waste collected fortnightly in 240 litre brown bins to urban areas only (8 months of the year on).

Cllr Richard Holmes then made a suggestion based on the calculation that extracting glass recyclables from blue bins would result in Council having to pay just £10-15 per tonne of blue bin waste as opposed to £80 per tonne with glass items included.

He estimated that such a move would result in a saving of £700,000 and would “dramatically change things here”.

It was agreed by members to defer any decision to allow the matter to be examined and a report brought back to the next meeting.

Mr McPeake agreed but added that the next Committee meeting will take place in August due to the summer recess.