Scotland achieved a recycling and composting rate of 37.2% for the year ending June 2010 – indicating that it is slowly progressing towards its 40% recycling and composting target for the end of the calendar year but is unlikely to meet it.
The municipal waste figures published by the environmental watchdog – based on returns from the 32 Scottish local authorities submitted to WasteDataFlow – amounts to a 2% increase on the recycling figure for the same period in 2009/10. However, this leaves the country 2.8% shy of its 2010 goal with six months still to take into account.
Included in the figures was the performance of Scotland in the first quarter figure of 2010/11 – which covers April to June 2010 – the recycling and composting rate achieved was 40.7%, a rise from 38.7% from the same quarter in 2008/09 (see letsrecycle.com story).
Also in the year-ending figures, which are presented as a rolling year to eliminate seasonal factors, it emerged that there had been a fall in the amount of municipal waste collected by local authorities between July 2009 and June 2010, which dropped from 3,263,715 tonnes to 3,204,671 tonnes.
This was matched by a decline in the amount o municipal waste sent to landfill. Landfilled waste fell from 2,027,678 tonnes to 1,919,399 tonnes over the rolling year.
Scotland continued to perform well on biodegradable waste, with 70,644 tonnes reduction in the amount landfilled compared to June 2008 to July 2009. This meant 1,151,132 tonnes was landfilled in this period against its 2010 Landfill Allowances target of 1.2 million tonnes.
“Challenging”
Commenting on the figures, Kenny Boag, national waste policy unit manager at SEPA, said: “”The results for the three months of April, May and June 2010 are encouraging. Less solid waste and biodegradable waste collected by councils went to landfill and the country's recycling rate rose to 40.7%.
“This has increased our rolling year figure from 36.7%, where it was at the end of the last quarter, but although we are coming close to achieving our goal it will be challenging.”
Despite the continued improvement, Mr Boag was quick to warn against complacency. He said: “Scotland has progressed considerably over the last few years, with our recycling rate rising from 17.1% in 2004/05 to where it sits now. But that doesn't mean we can relax, we all need to work together to make achieving this target a reality.”
The figures for the second quarter of 2010/11 – covering July to September 2010 – are set to be published at the start of 2011.
Councils
Assessing the performance of individual councils over the rolling year, Clackmannanshire council emerged as the highest performer with a 48.3% recycling and composting rate, while Fife council posted a 46.1% recycling and composting rate.
Conversely, the Shetland Islands recorded the lowest performance with 19.2%, which was just short of Eilean Siar which recorded a 20.2% recycling and composting rate for the period.
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