Orkney, Shetland and Western Isles councils have each received a multi-million pound grant from the Executive's Strategic Waste Fund to be invested in waste management schemes between 2004/05 and 2019/2020.
Announcing the funding, Scottish environment minister Ross Finnie said: “The Executive is committed to transforming the country's record on waste reduction, recycling, composting and recovery. This funding will help ensure many households across these three islands have access to recycling facilities.”
Shetland Islands council has been allocated 5,871,884, some of which it plans to use to increase the tonnage of glass and cans it collects. The council wants to expand its kerbside collections in Lerwick and Scalloway to take glass and cans and add facilities for these materials to recycling centres in areas not covered by kerbside collections.
Waste prevention is also part of the focus for Shetland's grant and the council intends to promote home composting and printer cartridge recycling as well as running educational and promotional campaigns.
Orkney Islands council has proposed spending its 4,269,000 expanding its kerbside recycling collections and existing recycling centres. It also hopes to construct two new recycling centres and run a waste prevention scheme.
Western Isles council will receive 4,086,000 to spend on a number of new waste management schemes. Central to its plans is expanding the council's current bring site network to one for every 250 households and introducing a kerbside sort recycling collection to 7,000 households in Stornoway.
Mr Finnie said: “By providing these three councils with this funding we are helping them meet their targets for waste minimisation, recycling and reduction in landfill. We are determined to provide Scots with much more sustainable ways of managing their waste.”
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