A councillor has claimed that “the roll out of brown bins at £40 each is not working” – as figures show a fall in green waste collected. 

Since the introduction of the new brown bins at the beginning of April this year, there were 3,156 tonnes of garden waste collected in the five months up until the end of August. This compared to 4,991 tonnes in the same five-month period during 2023. 

Middlesbrough Independent Councillor Association (MICA) Councillor Dennis McCabe requested the figures at last week’s full meeting of Middlesbrough Council.

During the meeting on September 11, Cllr McCabe also asked Executive Member for the Environment, Labour Councillor Peter Gavigan for “an indication how much fly tipping has gone on this year, because of the fortnightly bin collections?”

The introduction of fortnightly refuse collections only came into effect last month, on August 6, so fly tipping figures before this date will not be affected by the change from weekly to fortnightly refuse collections.

The figures provided to Cllr McCabe were the total number of fly tipping reports that were made by members of the public between the start of April and the end of August this year, which had gone up to 3,370, from 2,880 in the same period of 2023. A single fly tipping incident can receive multiple reports from different people.

Cllr Gavigan said: “Encouragingly, we didn’t see an increase in fly-tipping of green waste over the corresponding period, although we will continue to closely monitor the data. Comparing April, May and June 2024 to the same three month period in 2023 there were fewer green waste and household waste dumps dealt with by the council.”

Upon being sent the garden waste figures, Cllr McCabe commented that “it is clear the roll out of the brown bins at £40 each is not working with a loss of 1835 tonnes of green waste. The question: where has it gone and how much has been lost in revenue.”

Cllr Gavigan outlined that the new policy brought Middlesbrough Council into line with other local authorities: “Indeed, the number of subscribers this year has doubled our original forecast – which was made by analysing take up at similar local authorities.

“More than half of Middlesbrough’s eligible households have now signed up to the green waste service and in the first quarter of the year, our crews collected around 57% the amount of green waste that they did in the corresponding period last year. Of course, now that green waste collection is not a universal service we would expect to collect a smaller amount of waste.”

At the same meeting on September 11, MICA Councillor Tony Grainge also sought clarification in the new garden waste collection system.

He said to Cllr Gavigan: “What happens for people who haven’t got a brown bin? I know originally when we’ve been through some of the meetings, it was expected that some of the garden waste would go into the black bins, but on the black bins it says that it’s not allowed. Just for some clarification really.”

The Executive Member, Cllr Gavigan, responded: “I think there was some confusion that arose over a statement that went out that said that people can put garden waste in the black bin.

“Now they can, in the sense that there is no official sanction that can be taken against them for doing that. But for any number of reasons, we strongly recommend that that isn’t the case. And we strongly recommend that people pay the £40 and get the garden waste service for the year.

“If people are struggling with that, then it’s a great idea to share with neighbours and spread that cost.”