GREEN-fingered residents across the borough can now sign up to a popular Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council green waste service for 2015.

The Garden Waste Service, which starts from Monday, February 16, allows people to keep busy gardening, mowing lawns and trimming hedges. The scheme will continue until mid-December.

When they sign up, residents will be given a weekday collection day dependent on which area of the borough they live, along with two sacks to collect their grass, trimmings, leaves, twigs, prunings and weeds.

Residents who sign up to the service are charged by the number of collections that are made, meaning that people who sign up after the scheme has already started, will only be charged for how many collections they will receive.

Everything collected in the large, hard-wearing green waste bags is composted to produce bags of Pro-Grow, a high quality organic soil conditioner to help gardens grow.

Last year, more than 6,000 people in the borough joined the scheme, sending 1,700 tons of garden waste for composting.

Councillor Hayley Eachus, borough council Cabinet member for community services and the environment, said: “Residents shouldn’t be putting their garden waste into their grey bin. The garden waste collection service offers residents a convenient and environmentally-friendly way to recycle it.”

For more information, or to sign up, click here or call the council on 01256 844844.