Aberdeenshire outlines three-weekly collection trial

Changes to the council’s kerbside collection service were agreed last month, having been put on hold due to questions over funding.

This includes the potential to move from an alternate weekly to a three-weekly residual waste service from April 2020.

Using existing containers, the trial service will see residual waste (via a 240L wheeled bin) collected on one week, followed by two weeks of collection of commingled recycling. Food waste will be collected on a weekly basis.

Pilot

Aberdeenshire Council’s Waste Manager, Ros Baxter, said: “We’re pleased to get the pilot going so quickly at Mintlaw and we’ll be running pilots in other areas of Aberdeenshire later in the year.

“The details of these are being finalised and we will let affected householders in the next pilot areas know when this will start as soon as possible.

“The aim of the new service is to push up recycling rates – this has been done successfully by other Scottish local authorities using similar methods and we believe it will also work here.

“One of the key things we continue to try to impress is that we want residents to simply think for a second about how they dispose of the waste they generate, then use the services we provide as best they can.

“Although landfill capacity is essentially reduced, if recycling services are used to their full capacity most households should be able to cope and the use of the food waste bin means there should be no additional hygiene issues either.”

Collection

Aberdeenshire council collects around 60,000 tonnes of recyclable material and 80,000 tonnes of non-recyclable waste annually from 120,000 households and business customers across the region. In 2017 Aberdeenshire’s recycling rate was 43.7%, slightly below the Scottish average of 45.6%.

According to the council, an analysis of the residual waste collected from the kerbside suggests that as much as 30,000 tonnes of additional recyclable or compostable material is collected every year, at a disposal cost of £3.5 million.

Residual waste is currently treated via a long term contract with Suez, largely using the company’s Stoneyhill landfill site. The authority sent a total of 69,000 tonnes of waste to landfill in 2017, according to data from the Scottish Environment Protection Agency.