If you are lucky enough to have a garden, the best way to deal with garden waste is by home composting.

This means you can easily produce compost for free using a homemade heap – and there are lots of ‘how to make one’ guides on the internet.

North Yorkshire residents can also buy subsidised home compost bins, which are £12 for a 220-litre bin and £15 for a 330-litre bin. There is also a buy-one-get-one-half-price online offer (plus a delivery charge per order). Please visit composting or call 0800 316 4454.

The 330-litre home compost bins are also available to buy for £15 from Malton, Northallerton, Seamer Carr, Selby, Skipton, West Harrogate and Whitby household waste recycling centres, but they do not have the buy-one-get-one-half-price offer.

If you are interested in home composting but are not sure where to start, watch our short video.

More than a third of the contents of the average rubbish bin are biodegradable and can be composted easily. However, it is important to get the mix right. Items such as grass clippings, veg and fruit peelings, salad leaves and old flowers will make up the ‘green waste’ and contain nitrogen. These materials are quick to rot and provide compost with moisture. We also need to put in ‘brown waste’, which are materials slower to rot, providing fibre and air pockets in the mixture. Materials such as egg and cereal boxes, shredded paper, scrunched-up cardboard, paper or even vacuum bag contents all contain carbon and will help the composting process.

If you want to compost even more – cooked and processed food, such as dairy products, fish, shellfish, meat, bones, bread, cheese and pasta - you will need a hot composter. We have partnered with Great Green Systems to offer some great deals on food waste. These will help you to manage all your food and garden waste at home. North Yorkshire residents can get up to 40 per cent off on the Great Green Systems website.

If you still have a lot of garden waste, you can take it for free to our household waste recycling centres and there is also the council garden waste collection service from home, for which there is a charge.