Highland Council to collect unwanted garden waste bins

Highland Council is to begin collecting thousands of unwanted recycling bins from households that do not want to pay for their garden waste to be collected.

The local authority introduced a £30 annual charge in July for emptying the garden waste bins, a service previously provided without an additional fee.

About 67,000 households have the wheelie bins.

So far, about 32,000 collection permits have been bought and the option to buy one remains open.

Highland Council said it would begin collecting unwanted bins from 4 December.

The local authority's decision to move to charging for the brown bin collections was opposed by a campaign.

Campaigners said it would lead to fly tipping and would discriminate against low income households because it is charged in addition to council tax.

Not everyone in the Highland area, which has a population of about 233,000 people, has a brown bin.

Sutherland and Skye have no garden waste collections at all and in Lochaber only residents of Fort William get the service. Other rural areas of the region also do not get the bin collections.

The bins are provided in larger centres of population, including Inverness.