The borough, which includes the towns of Dunbar, Musselburgh, East Linton and North Berwick, is reducing the frequency of residual waste collections offered to householders from weekly to fortnightly, as well as offering food waste collections from the kerbside for the first time.
Food waste collections from non-rural households are a legal requirement for all of the councils in Scotland by 2016. The 2012 Waste (Scotland) Regulations also include a target for Scotland’s local authorities to achieve 60% recycling of household waste by 2020.
East Lothian’s recycling rate currently stands at around 44%, but the council is hoping that wholesale changes to the waste collection regime will bring it closer to the government’s target.
Landfill
In a statement on its website, the council said: “Last year East Lothian council collected nearly 26,000 tonnes of mixed waste from households.
“Disposing of this cost £2million in Landfill tax alone. Over half of these materials could have been recycled. This included 7,000 tonnes of food waste, which will now be separately collected.
“By putting the right materials in the right containers 12,000 tonnes of that mixed waste can now be recycled at the kerbside simply by changing the bin you put it in.”
Households across the borough will take delivery of a seven litre kitchen caddy, a 23-litre outdoor caddy with a lockable lid and a roll of compostable liners from next Monday (April 13), with the first food waste collections taking place from the following week. Food waste will be collected on a weekly basis after this time.
The shift to fortnightly collections for residual waste will take place on April 27, while the council is also expanding its garden waste collection service which will be available for all households. Previously around 90% of households were covered by the fortnightly brown-bin garden waste collection service.
Recycling
Recycling is collected on a fortnightly basis from households, using a green box for glass, metal and plastic packaging, and blue box for paper and card.
The material from the recycling collections is taken to East Lothian Council’s waste transfer station, at Kinwegar, near Wallyford where it is bulked up before it is transported.
The glass, cans and plastics are loaded into a large lorry and taken to a materials recovery facility near Irvine in North Ayrshire where they are sorted to produce bales of two different types of plastic bottles, mixed plastics, steel and aluminium and containers of crushed glass.
The paper and cardboard is taken to a facility at West Fortune, near Athelstaneford in East Lothian where it is separated and the cardboard is baled. The sorted paper and cardboard are processed at UPM’s paper mill at Shotton in North East Wales. The arrangement for the collection of recycling will remain unchanged.
The council is carrying out a series of roadshows throughout April to inform residents of the incoming changes to collection services.
[Story updated 15:00 09/04/2015 as it was wrongly stated that Scottish councils would face financial penalties for not meeting recycling targets]
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