Aberdeenshire rules out new green waste collection scheme

The council told letsrecycle.com as Compost Awareness Week continued this week that it had decided against a new scheme to collect garden waste from the kerbside, fearing it would mean collecting additional amounts of waste that could be composted at home.

The key decision came at a meeting of councillors late last month in which a range of options for green waste were considered.

Home composting
Instead of the proposed free collection service, Aberdeenshire will put more resources into promoting the use of council-subsidised home composters, including “green cone” food digesters.

This will include heavy promotion of the existing home composting scheme as well as campaigns to promote community composting initiatives.

Aberdeenshire's decision runs contrary to the policies of many local authorities in the rest of the UK, which see green waste as an easily recyclable material that can add swift increases to local recycling rates to meet government targets.

But Ian Doyle, marketing and promotions officer, told letsrecycle.com that the council's decision was borne out of “trying to reduce waste, not produce it”.

He explained: “Research has shown that if you provide free collections of garden waste you increase the waste collected rather than reduce it. We are aiming to reduce the waste produced by the council, rather than increasing the recycling. We are trying to get people to take responsibility for their waste at the source.”

Transport
An added environmental impact of a collection scheme would be in the transport required, Mr Doyle added, pointing out that Aberdeenshire's 100,000 households are spread across 2,500 square miles.

Providing collections could also have been expensive, he said. The council is currently switching all urban areas to alternate weekly collections of plastic bottles, glass, paper, card and cans. But its rural areas are yet to be included because of the impracticality of collecting from them.

Aberdeenshire council is now setting about boosting publicity campaigns for its home composting scheme, with information packs going to households highlighting cut price home composting bins on offer. Mr Doyle said the council had already received an “avalanche” of requests for the composting bins.