A GRANT of almost £47,000 has been promised to a North Craven business to establish a green composting project.

The cash from European funding will go towards setting up the project at Growing with Grace, an organic nursery at Clapham.

It is hoped that 1,600 tonnes of garden waste, which would normally find its way into landfill sites, will be turned into compost.

The waste will consist of garden vegetation, grass and tree cuttings.

However items from the kitchen, such as peelings, will be excluded to avoid potential contamination from cooked foods.

Although classed as bio-degradable, the waste, when put in landfill, takes up a lot of space, and can ferment and create the greenhouse gas methane if it is covered and deprived of air.

The cash is the first of a series of grants applied for by the North Craven Composting Scheme which will, initially, run for three years.

Growing with Grace is working in conjunction with Craven District Council and Yorwaste - which runs Skibeden waste disposal site near Skipton.

It will take some of the garden waste collected by the district council when its new garden waste collection service gets under way this spring.

"We received a £250,000 grant from DEFRA last year to pay for a new collection wagon and the 9,000 brown wheelie bins which will be distributed to around half the households in the district," said Greg Robinson, head of operations with the district council.

He explained that garden refuse collected in the North Craven area would be taken to the Clapham-based nursery, but a contract with the business still had to be completed.

Waste collected in other parts of the district will be taken to other sites, depending which is the nearest.

Mr Robinson said the scheme was just part of an overall project to encourage people to recycle more of the rubbish generated at home and from the garden.

If the scheme proves to be successful, and householders who are given the brown bins use them for their garden waste, there is chance the scheme will be extended when it is reviewed after three years.

Villages and areas of Craven not yet included in the brown bin scheme could possibly be issued with a communal bin for garden waste collection.

Nigel Lockett, of Growing with Grace, told the Herald that the grant from the Government was the first part of the composting phase, and the business was still awaiting final confirmation of grant funding from other bodies.

It is hoped this will follow in the near future in order for the project to begin making a significant reduction in the use of landfill for green waste.

Five other projects in North Yorkshire also received funding, with the total awards exceeding £960,000.