THIS year’s fortnightly brown bin collections will start in Leeds from Monday, March 13, with collections continuing through to December.

Leeds City Council delivers the largest garden waste collection service by any council in the UK and continues to be one of a minority of councils to do so for free.

As part of the free service, crews emptied 29,662 tonnes of garden waste from the 217,000 brown bins across Leeds last year.

All the garden waste collected in brown bins across Leeds is composted locally and used in farming, horticulture and land restoration projects around the city.

The service helps homeowners, with gardens that produce enough waste to justify a fortnightly collection, manage their garden waste during busier gardening months and is intended to compliment other environmentally beneficial ways to use/dispose of garden waste.

These include leaving grass cuttings on your lawn, reusing garden waste by composting or creating piles for insects, birds and other local wildlife, which not only help the eco-system but the garden itself.

To further help residents with composting, the council is working in partnership with Great Green Systems to offer an exclusive 40% discount to residents on a range of composters, find out more at www.leeds.gov.uk/composting

Excess garden waste can be disposed of for free, at all eight of the council’s household waste recycling centres which are open seven days a week, no booking required. Residents can find their closest centre at www.leeds.gov.uk/recycling

Residents can find out when their first brown bin collection date is by downloading the Leeds Bin App or by checking online at www.leeds.gov.uk/mybinday

Councillor Mohammed Rafique, Leeds City Council’s executive member for environment and housing, said: “The resumption of the free brown bin collection service is welcome news, marking the return of spring to Leeds.

“With over 18,000 brown bins emptied and taken for composting every day across Leeds, we are proud to offer the largest, free garden waste collection service of any council in the UK to help residents manage their gardens.

“However, we cannot offer this collection service to every household and regardless of whether you have a brown bin or not, the most environmentally friendly way to manage garden waste is by home-composting as much as you can; creating soil nutrients and improving the biodiversity of your garden and neighbourhood.

“There is plenty of on-line advice on how easy this is to do, and I am pleased that we have been able to secure a big discount on compost bins for Leeds residents.”