All householders will get kerbside collections under the plan, the council said. The services will roll out over two years from April 2004.
 The new scheme will use bins for paper, green waste and residual waste |
Scottish environment minister Ross Finnie gave the go-ahead to a joint application for a household waste recycling scheme by four Scottish councils in south west Scotland.
The application to the Strategic Waste fund was made by East Ayrshire, North Ayrshire, South Ayrshire and Dumfries and Galloway councils.
Each household will be given a black box which will hold glass and cans, a blue bin for paper and pamphlets and a brown bin for garden waste, as well as the residual waste bins currently used. The black box will be emptied once a fortnight, as will the residual waste bin. But the blue and brown bins will be emptied once a month.
Councillor James Carmichael, chair of the community services committee, said: “If we cannot demonstrate that we have halved the amount of material we send to landfill in the next ten years, we will be in breach of European legislation. The more clean, recyclable waste we can collect at the kerbside, the less need for more complex waste treatment plants which are not always welcomed by the general public.”
The four councils aim to recycle 66,000 tonnes of waste each year from 233,000 households under the joint kerbside programme. Altogether, the scheme will cost 70 million and should create at least 250 jobs, according to the Caledonian Shanks Centre for Waste Management, which complied the application.
East Ayrshire must meet the government target of recycling 25% of its waste by 2006 and diverting 50% of its waste away from landfill by 2013. By 2020 it must increase this diversion to 65%.
The Scottish Executive distributed 6 million to local authorities for recycling in December last year as part of the Strategic Waste Fund (see letsrecycle.com story). Under the terms of the fund, which gave grants based on population size, Dumfries and Galloway got 246,000, North Ayrshire got 152,000 and South Ayrshire got 138,000.
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