Plans to bring in four weekly residual bin collections could save Denbighshire £800,000 a year.

The cash strapped council needs to save £900,000 on its waste bill so is set to follow Conwy’s example on introducing the collections.

These mean that residents will have their waste that cannot be recycled collected once a month.

A report before members of the communities scrutiny committee, meeting on Thursday, said that bringing in there collections would mean a saving of £807,000 a year.

As part of the plans recycling will be sorted by council workers on the kerbside in a specially adapted bin lorry.

The report said: “The waste service has a pressure of £700k in 2018/19, which will rise to at least £900k from 2019/20. The combined potential savings available from changing to a kerbside sort model for recycling and changing to four weekly residual collection is currently reported to be circa £807,000 per annum. This is predominantly achieved through collecting higher quality recycling which generates income that partially offsets collection costs.”

Councils are having to find more ways to up their recycling figures as by law they could face fines for missing targets set by the Welsh Government.

Fines of up to £200 per tonne can be levied on councils that fail to meet landfill allowance targets and the statutory recycling targets.

Denbighshire’s targets for the percentage of waste reused, recycled and composted are 64% in 2019/20 and 70% in 2024/25.

The county met the 2019/20 target three years early, but recycling rates have since plateaued.

The report added that the four weekly bin collections in Conwy had proven to be a success when it came to increasing recycling rates.

It said: “Recent statistics from neighbouring Conwy, who have trialled both three and four weekly residual waste collection, indicate that four weekly collections led to the highest recycling rates, 14% increase on four weekly collection versus a 5% increase on three weekly collection.”