Scotland&#39s high rise homes in 47m recycling drive

With a third of Scottish households are in multi-occupancy properties, ministers believe the new funding will enable more than 500,000 people to recycle their waste more easily.

Stairwell to heaven: Recycling is spreading among the tenements of central Scotland

The funding, from the Executive's Strategic Waste Fund, is being made available for use in areas in the central belt of Scotland, including Glasgow and Edinburgh, as well as in Dundee.

It includes a 27 million scheme to set up a fortnightly recycling service for 120,000 tenement households in Glasgow.

Scotland's environment minister, Ross Finnie, said research had found people living in flats and high rise homes not participating “as much as we would like”.

He said: “That's because services for many flats are local recycling centres or kerbside collection points some distance away.”

But the minister insisted: “Successful pilots across the country have shown that we can provide convenient, cost-effective recycling facilities for people living in flats. This now means that another half a million Scots really can reduce, reuse and recycle.”

Funding
Six local authorities will be receiving a share-out of the 47 million funding. These are:

• Dundee City Council: 1.3m for on-street recycling containers for 7,200 properties across the city.
• City of Edinburgh Council – an as-yet undecided amount to provide on-street recycling services to an additional 60,000 households in multi-occupancy properties.
• Falkirk Council: 1.4m for door-to-door collection services for 6,000 households living in high-rise buildings in Central Falkirk and Grangemouth.
• Glasgow City Council: 27m for a fortnightly backcourt collection service to 120,000 tenement households across the city.
• South Lanarkshire Council: 3.3 million for a multi-material recycling scheme for 15,000 households in Thorntonhall and West Craigs.
• West Dunbartonshire Council: 2.9m for a fortnightly doorstep collection service of paper, cans and plastic bottles for 12,000 households.

Glasgow
The bulk of the new funding – 27 million – is going to Glasgow city council. Initially, it will allow the continuation and expansion of the existing 5,000-home tenement recycling scheme in the north and east of the city.

Councillor David Stevenson, Glasgow's executive member for environmental protection services, said: “With this level of funding we can bring in new recycling opportunities across the city, particularily tenements.

“Around 35% of Glasgow's properties are tenemental style. We hope the public will support us in helping to protect the environment by maximising the use of their domestic and local recycling facilities,” Cllr Stevenson added.

Before the latest round of Strategic Waste Fund money, Glasgow had received 11,628,721 from the fund over the last four years. This saw the introduction of a multi-material blue bin kerbside recycling service for 93,000 homes and a brown bin garden waste service for 55,000 homes.

Along with the expansion of bring banks and upgrades to the Easter Queenslie civic amenity site – as well as the council's sorting plant – Glasgow city council reached a 15.8% recycling rate for the 220,000 tonnes of household waste collected in 2005/06. It has reported achieving a 16.5 % rate for the first quarter of 2006/07.