Edinburgh looks to flats to further boost reycling rate

The announcement came as the council’s Transport and Environment Committee met today (March 21) to discuss the council’s latest landfill and recycling data. The figures showed an increase in recycling of 1,239 tonnes – more than 1% – in recycling in the city for the year to date compared to the same period in 2015/16.

The rising recycling rates were attributed by the council in part to improvements to the service, including the introduction of new kerbside dry mixed and glass recycling collections to more than 140,000 households.

Meanwhile, waste recycled in communal packaging bins serving flats and tenements has also risen significantly for the year to date, and is up 39% from 2015/16 following the introduction of additional facilities.

Looking forward, the council said that enhancing recycling service for residents in flats further would be a “priority”.

Redesign

And, in a separate report put before the Transport and Environment Committee today entitled ‘Redesign of Recycling Services in Tenements and Flats’, the council outlined its proposed way forward.

The report explains that following pilots in the Bellevue/Broughton and Hillside areas of the city (see letsrecycle.com story), the council put together an outline strategy for recycling in flats. This would see separate paper and packaging bins replaced with the single mixed recycling bin used in kerbside recycling areas, enhance the bin capacity provided for recycling versus landfill and expand the network of communal glass points. The purpose was to make recycling as easy as possible for residents and therefore boost participation.

However, the council said it needed to “future proof” its recycling services and ensure they were in keeping with the Scottish Government’s Code of Practice on Household Waste Management, which aims to create a waste and recycling service which is broadly uniform across Scotland and ensure high quality materials are collected.

This has been problematic for the council when considering flats, because the council had wanted to collect paper, card, cans and plastics in a single bin to maximise the number of bins that could be allocated to recycling, something which the code proposes should not be done. In addition, the council said that in practice it had to provide more residual waste capacity than the code guidelines allowed for.

As a result, the council said it would be carrying out a detailed feasibility study looking at different options.

The report explains: “Waste and Cleansing services are currently considering how communal service can be improved for residents. These proposals are at an early stage and require some feasibility work to assess how deliverable the desired changes are. The service intends to commence the feasibility work immediately with a view to reporting back to Committee before the end of the calendar year.”

The feasibility work will consider the cost of increasing the frequency that communal containers are emptied (most are currently collected twice a week) and the re-routing services, among other factors.

“Committed”

Transport and environment convener, Councillor Lesley Hinds, said: “As a council we are 100% committed to increasing the amount of waste recycled in Edinburgh. Over recent years we have implemented several changes to make recycling easier for residents, and these are clearly having a positive impact.

“While maintaining this focus on recycling, we recognise that improvements need to be made across the service, and I’m pleased to see that our ongoing efforts are making a difference. That said, there is no room for complacency, and we will continue to direct resources into completing the outstanding actions in our Waste and Cleansing Improvement Plan to achieve a better service for everyone.”

At today’s meeting, councillors also discussed a 20% drop in average weekly waste complaints from the previous quarter, with just 0.17% of collections resulting in a customer complaint (1042 a week).

This has follows the introduction of the 65-point Waste and Cleansing Improvement Plan, first agreed in November 2016, which aims to address perceived poor quality in the waste collection and street cleansing services.

An update on the plan, also put before members of the Transport and Environment Committee today, reports good progress, with 46 of the actions already achieved. Amongst improvements made so for are a reduction in the number of reported missed collections and an increase in the percentage of street cleansing enquiries dealt with within timescale – 96% as of February 2017.

Additional actions include the ongoing recruitment of permanent staff to the service, the roll-out of the ‘Our Edinburgh’ campaign to discourage anti-social behaviour like fly-tipping and littering and the introduction of new, lower charges for special uplifts – £5 per item as opposed to £26 for up to six.