Edinburgh unveils revised recycling strategy

The expansion of the city's recycling services follows a review of its recycling strategy and comes after new targets set by the Scottish Government in January this year. At present the city has a 27.2% recycling rate.

At present Edinburgh collects dry recyclables on alternate weeks – using blue and red boxes on an alternate weekly basis. The red box is for cardboard, drinks cartons, postcards while the blue box includes steel and aluminium containers, glass containers and aerosols. A report to the environment committee – produced by recycling initiative Remade Scotland – cautioned the council that it would be unable to afford to collect its blue and red recycling boxes weekly or add in plastic bottles.

Cllr Robert Aldridge, environment leader, said: “The Edinburgh public have shown that if we provide them with the facilities and opportunities to recycle then they will support us in this. This strategy shows our commitment to meeting our ambitious targets and will help us to reach 40% recycling by 2012.”

Quick

Commissioned in 2007, the review of the city's recycling strategy looked at a number of “quick and easy” schemes, as well as some which would need “additional planning, long lead in time or procurement processes”, in helping achieve the goal of 36.85% recycling by 2010/11 laid out in the Scottish Government's new performance mechanism the Single Outcome Agreements.

The organisation identified the city's existing garden waste collection scheme, which currently serves 100,000 households, as a potential ‘quick-win', and suggested that it the collections were extended to a further 10,000 homes and operated all-year round rather than just the summer. The committee approved the recommendation and the rollout will now take place at the start of October.

Similarly easy to introduce, the report claimed, would be the expansion of on-street recycling facilities, with the identification of new sites and the first banks scheduled to be introduced in autumn, and also through improving recycling at household centres. However, this will be subject to a further report to the committee at a later date.

Cllr Aldridge said: “These measures to extend and expand the city's recycling schemes mean that it will now be even easier for more residents to become involved and adopt the reduce, reuse and recycle approach .”

Complicated

In a more complicated move, the review recommended that the council could divert 15,105 tonnes of waste from landfill with the introduction of food waste collections. The council said that this would be “integral” in achieving its 2010/11 targets and that food waste remains an “untapped resource”.

However, the council does not currently operate a food waste collection service and claimed that the introduction of such a scheme would be “over and above” the existing waste service. Acknowledging that timing was a critical factor in its implementation, the council will go to tender by the end of the year with food collections projected to start by 2011.

The council also intends to extend its recycling service to households it terms as ‘hard-to-reach', such as those living in tenements or ‘colonies'. In April, the council began a trial scheme in the narrow ‘colony' of Glenogle Road, in the north of the city, with residents asked to place their recycling boxes at the end of the street and collect them again once they have been emptied.

Aware that each ‘hard-to-reach' household may need an “individually designed recycling solution” or a combination of existing schemes, the outcome of the trial is due to be reported to the Committee “in due course” but positive feedback could see similar properties receive the service in early 2009.

Kerbside

However, the Remade Scotland suggestion to increase the frequency of recycling box collections was not approved due to the additional cost it would incur, which would go beyond the 2008/09 grant settlement funding. It was accepted that this suggestion should not be adopted without further market testing.

The council's existing kerbside collection contract with Abitibi-Consolidated Recycling Europe is due to expire in March of next year, and cannot be extended beyond September 2009. The council will now begin considerations of whether to re-tender the service or operate it in house, however, the increased cost implications of accepting Remade Scotland's recommendations will have to be factored in.