The council let residents know on 4 June 2026 that wood and laminates can no longer be recycled at its sites in Dunbar, Kinwegar and North Berwick after contractors responsible for collecting the material began reaching storage capacity.
In a statement, East Lothian Council said: “Reprocessing plants across Scotland are currently experiencing significant disruption to their ability to recycle wood and laminates.
“Contractors responsible for collecting these materials are now reaching capacity for their storage, including those who operate in East Lothian.
“As a result, we are unable to recycle wood or laminates at our recycling centres at Dunbar, Kinwegar and North Berwick at present. Please place these materials in the non-recyclable waste skip at our centres where it will be sent for energy recovery.
“Unfortunately, we are unable to say how long this disruption – which is outside our control – will last.”
The council apologised for the disruption and thanked residents for their understanding.
Wood recycling capacity pressures
While the issue is being felt at a local level, the challenges facing East Lothian are symptomatic of wider pressures in the waste wood market.
The Wood Recyclers’ Association (WRA) said the UK market is still recovering from a series of unplanned outages at end-use facilities during 2025, which resulted in a significant build-up of material across the sector.
The Association commented: “In particular, we have now entered outage season which means many end use facilities shut for routine maintenance, reducing demand for material.
“In Scotland, there has been further market disruption due to an outage at one end use facility.
The WRA said it is working with the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) to ensure regulators continue to take a pragmatic approach to storage limits while the market remains under pressure.
It added: “We are working closely with SEPA to ensure that they continue to take a risk-based and pragmatic approach with regards to waste wood storage during this time.
“Meanwhile in England, we continue to encourage operators to apply to temporarily exceed their permitted storage limits under RPS 361.”
Issued in December 2025, RPS 361 replaced the previous waste wood RPS and allows sites in England to temporarily exceed their permitted storage limits where they have been affected by unplanned downtime at end destinations such as biomass plants, incinerators and panel board manufacturing facilities.
The new RPS extended its scope to include sites storing waste wood destined for panel board manufacture, marking the first time these operations have been explicitly covered.
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