Brown bins for everyone by end of year

Brown bins for disposing food waste will be made available to all homes in Derry by the end of this year, it’s been revealed.

Around 24,000 brown bins were issued to local homes by the former Derry City Council in 2014 as part of a bid to improve recycling rates and reduce the amount of food waste being taken to landfill sites.

Once collected, the waste is taken to a special processing plant where it is recycled into compost which is used on farms and community gardens.

However, there has been some confusion as to what areas in Derry should have the brown bins.

The issue was raised at a meeting of Derry City and Strabane District’s council’s Environment and Regeneration Committee.

Speaking at the meeting, Sinn Fein Councillor Colly Kelly said that while he had no brown bin, his fellow Sinn Fein councillor Kevin Campbell did have, yet they only lived ‘a stone’s throw’ away from each other in Creggan.

Responding, Conor Canning, Head of Environment with the Council, said the issue was now ‘moving forward with the extra roll out’ of the bins.

He added the ‘logistics’ associated with the brown bins had ‘take some time’ but stressed that it was Council’s intention to have ‘all areas included in the food waste scheme by the end of this year’.