North Herts Council needs to find a new contractor to empty the bins from 2025 when the current contract runs out. Work on this has already started since it takes a long time to select the best contractor and give them the time to get everything set up. Allowing enough time is necessary to avoid the problems that occurred when the contract was last changed in 2018.

As part of this process the council needs to decide on any changes to the recycling and waste service.

We have agreed that the new service will include recycling of “plastic films” which means plastic bags and much of the plastic that food comes wrapped in. This should decrease the amount that people need to put in their purple bins.

A survey has shown that at the moment almost 80% of purple bins are not full when they are collected and that about half of them are at least half empty. In addition, nearly a quarter of what is in a typical purple bin is waste food which could go in the brown weekly food waste bin.

That means that lots of bins are being emptied when they are nowhere near full and that the number of these will increase when the new recycling arrangements start. That costs all of us money (it is paid for out of our council tax) and is bad for the environment with more bin lorries than necessary driving around the district.

To overcome this the council has decided that, as from 2025, purple bins will be emptied every three weeks, instead of every two weeks. There will be no changes to the food waste, recycling or garden waste collections. With the ability to recycle more types of material this should not be a problem for most households. Ensuring that waste food goes in the weekly food waste collections should help most of the rest fit what cannot be recycled in their purple bins.

Large households or those who generate a lot of non-recyclable waste, such as households with several children in nappies, will continue to be able to get larger bins or more frequent collections.

There are still many details to work out but these changes should help people recycle more, reduce the environmental impact of bin lorries and minimise the amount of council tax that has to be spent on emptying bins. The current arrangements remain in place for the next two and half years