As of September 2014, all suitable Fife households – around 150,000 – use a service requiring four separate wheeled bins with a total capacity of 310 litres.
Under this four-bin service, waste is collected fortnightly in blue bins, cans and plastics is collected every four weeks in green bins, paper and card is collected every four weeks in black bins, and food and garden waste is collected fortnightly in red bins.
Glass is not collected at the kerbside, but residents can take this material to recycling points.
However, according to a council report, if no improvements are made to the current service and landfill tonnage remains the same in the area, disposal costs could rise by an additional £1.5 million each year.
The council therefore agreed yesterday (March 3) to trial two options, one of which would see waste collected every three weeks and the other every four weeks – both alongside more frequent collections of green and black recycling bins.
It is estimated that the council could save £350,000 a year in the short term from fully rolling out either of the options being trialled, rising to £900,000 after 2021 when the ban on landfilling of biodegradable municipal waste comes into force in Scotland
The trials will run from August/September 2015, with one-off costs of each trial estimated at more than £200,000, and subsequent full implementation of the chosen option from 2016-2018 estimated at more than £700,000.
Seven recycling service options were initially considered for potential future roll out, before the council settled on trialling the preferred two for detailed investigation in comparison to a ‘do nothing’ option.
Fife council-run waste firm Resource Efficient Solutions LLP (RES), which has operated collections in the area since it began trading in April 2014, will manage the trials. The firm is currently looking at expanding its operations to include commercial and industrial waste (see letsrecycle.com story).
Cardiff council (see letsrecycle.com story) and Torfaen (see letsrecycle.com story) council in Wales, as well as Banbridge council in Northern Ireland (see letsrecycle.com story) have also been considering collecting residual waste every four weeks.
Recycling rates
Fife believes it is well placed to meet the Scottish Government’s statutory recycling target of 60% by 2020, but adds that “considerable effort and changes are going to be required” to achieve the subsequent target of 70% by 2025.
It has assessed that full roll out of either of the two collection options could help the council achieve recycling rates of more than 65%, “placing it in a much better position” for meeting the 2025 target.
A review of the current service found that more than 50% of the contents of Fife households’ waste bins could be recycled at the kerbside, as well as a further 14% which could be taken to a recycling point or centre. It was found that only 36% of the contents needed to be disposed of in waste bins.
In October 2014 it was reported that loads of recycling were rejected by reprocessors due to contamination, but the council played down the potential impact of the new service on contamination (see letsrecycle.com story).
The council report also claims that customer feedback is “overwhelmingly in favour” of increasing the current four week frequency of the green (plastic and cans) recycling bin collections, with a survey identifying that more than 66% of respondents felt their green bins were overfull at the time of collection.
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