Edinburgh 1.5 billion contract deadline draws near

The deadline for tenders for the contract is January 16 and more than 40 companies have already applied. The council has not yet decided how far it will work in partnership with private companies to reach its recycling targets, but it said contractors could be involved in the day-to-day management of waste collections, providing disposal facilities and overall development of the service.

Complement
Robert Cairns, executive member of the council for environmental services, said: “The council wishes to augment and complement its current skills with those of a private sector partner or partners in order to find the best system for its waste management service and to improve the delivery of the service.

“At present, we are open-minded as to the scope, form and scale of a private-sector partnership and are interested in receiving proposals that will meet our objectives. We are also very willing to consider what role there can be for the voluntary and not for profit sector.”

The council said some activities could be carried out by a council in-house team, and it might also award parts of the contract alongside the four neighbouring councils with which Edinburgh has agreed a Lothians and Scottish Borders waste plan.

Fund
Edinburgh councillors are expecting to hear next week (beginning 19/01/04) whether their bid for 83 million of the Scottish Executive's Strategic Waste Fund has been successful. Of this, 28 million is an interim bid to be spent on recycling infrastructure before 2006/7.

Edinburgh currently has a recycling rate of 15% but must raise this to 25% to meet its 2006/7 target. To do this, it wants to increase green waste kerbside collections from 12,000 to 100,000 properties and use boxes for doorstep paper collections. Other plans for the 28 million include 120,000 collections of plastic, glass and aluminium and steel cans, more bring banks, high-rise recycling schemes, a city centre cardboard collection and doubling and upgrading civic amenity sites.

Cheshire Recycling currently collects paper in bags from 120,000 households, while Berryman collects bring bank glass and the council itself operates green waste kerbside and all other bring bank collections.

By 2020, Edinburgh's waste is predicted to double from 250,000 to 500,000 tonnes per year. The council will submit another funding bid to the Scottish Executive to build more infrastructure later this year.