Kirklees Council wants to give all households new smaller wheelie bins – to save money on waste disposal.

The council needs to save £29.3 million on its budget in 2025-26 and one way it wants to cut costs is by replacing grey bins, so people throw away less general waste.

The council plans to give all 160,000 households across the district a new 180-litre grey bin to replace the current 240-litre bins.

The new bins will be about three-quarters of the size of the old ones and the council hopes to save money by having less waste to get rid of.

Every tonne of waste not recycled costs the council money.

Clr Moses Crook, deputy leader of Kirklees Council, said: “As part of the 2025-26 draft budget, a number of proposals have been put forward including replacing grey general waste wheelie bins with bins that are three-quarters of the current size.

“We want to find ways of making the service greener and more efficient and this is one way we might be able to do that, in line with changes being implemented across the region and nationally.

“This change will encourage more recycling in Kirklees and contribute to our climate commitments, while also reducing the cost of the service.

“Some councils have chosen to move to three-weekly or even monthly collections for residents. We want to keep the current frequency of collections while doing everything we can to increase recycling rates.

“If the new system is agreed, it would mean approximately 160,000 new bins across the district. But we spend money for every tonne of waste we don’t recycle so a reduction in the amount of waste we put into our grey bins will generate savings for local taxpayers and more than cover the cost of the bins.”

The proposal is included in the council’s draft budget for 2025-26 which will go out to public consultation for the first time, so people will have chance to make their views known.

The draft budget isn’t due to be finalised until March. Read more about that HERE.

The council plans to increase council tax by the maximum 4.99% from April and has warned that 150-200 full-time equivalent jobs could go. Around half of those will be found by scrapping vacant posts but 80-100 redundancies could still be needed.

 

Kirklees Council bin collection dates for Christmas 2024 and January 2025 and when council tips are open