At a meeting yesterday (1 November) councillors agreed to the 65-point plan, in a bid to reduce the number of missed collections from households and improve the provision of waste services in communal areas.
Actions will include procuring in-cab routing technology to enable crews to record reasons why collections may not have taken place – which is likely to be rolled out across Edinburgh’s collection fleet by February 2017. The measure is intended to reduce the number of collections missed by crews.
Work will also be carried out to identify areas where collections have been missed most frequently and to identify the root-cause of these issues.
The council has also agreed to a tackle delays to collections of garden and food waste, which will see routes redesigned to take into account households with more than one container. For food waste, larger collection vehicles are due to be procured in order to handle an increase in participation in the council’s food waste collection service. These are expected to be in operation by May 2017.
Communal bins
On communal bins, which the council claims have seen problems including seasonal spikes in use, inappropriate use by residents and illegal use by businesses, the council is proposing to increase the level of supervision and targeted enforcement by its Trade Waste Enforcement Team.
The council will also investigate the use of ‘QR codes’ for residents to report missed collections and overflowing communal bins.
Transport and Environment Convener, councillor Lesley Hinds, said: “Waste and cleansing services are a real priority for the council, and we appreciate the frustration residents feel when their collections are missed or when they notice overflowing communal bins – this isn’t acceptable.
“That’s why we’ve drawn up this action plan, which will allow us to target hotspots and to focus our resources on tackling the biggest issues systematically, maintaining a clean and welcoming atmosphere for everyone.”
Action to address concerns over the city’s waste service comes after the council has completed out changes to its kerbside waste collection system. Changes to collections began in September 2014, aimed at expanding the kerbside capacity for recyclables.
According to figures published by the council in May, the service change had led to an increase in the tonnage of dry recycling collected from households by up to 29% as well as a 51% increase in separate food waste collections in some areas (see letsrecycle.com story).
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