A "WHEELIE" exciting launch will be taking place this week in North Yorkshire.

Easingwold will see the Hambleton district's new wheelie bin service launched carnival-style in the town on Friday.

The world's largest motorised dustbin, street theatre, stilt walkers, Millie The Milk Bottle, and a plastic bottle mountain will all feature in the special roadshow.

It will take place from 10am until 3pm, in the Market Place, kicking off a series of roadshows across the district to introduce residents to the council's new system for waste collection.

"We have got to get people on board for this scheme," said David Blades, Hambleton District Council cabinet spokesman for environmental health and housing.

"The pilot scheme was a real success, but people will be on a real learning curve when the scheme comes, so we want to raise awareness and give them all the information we can, and the roadshow is a great and fun way of doing that."

Officers will tour 46 town and village venues in the Easingwold, Bedale and Thirsk areas over the next three weeks to talk to the 13,000 residents who will change to the new collection system in September.

The residents will be using two wheelie bins - green for garden waste and black for general rubbish - which will be collected on alternate weeks.

The wheelie bin launch heralds the beginning of a two-year programme costing more than £1 million which will see the 36,000 homes throughout the district separating rubbish into two bins.

It also aims to increase recycling and reduce the amount of rubbish sent to landfill sites, with a target of recycling almost a quarter of all waste by the end of the two-year scheme.

The project has already won the support of TV waste collector Richard Moore, who plays Jarvis Skelton in the Yorkshire Television soap, Emmerdale, who led a failed attempt to introduce the bins to the village.

"I wish Hambleton District Council well in their introduction of a wheelie bin system," he said.

"We will be watching to see how it goes - and taking a leaf out of Hambleton's book in the future."

Updated: 08:51 Wednesday, July 23, 2003