Shortage of landfill prompts new Aberdeen collection scheme

The move comes following the council concern over the costs involved in sending material because of rising Landfill Tax and because “space in landfill is rapidly running out” and “no extra space available”.

” People have been recycling in the city for so long, so we don't believe there will be many problems changing to a new scheme.“
– Clare Neely, Aberdeen city council
The council rolled out a fortnightly collection of dry recyclables last July, to run alongside a garden waste collection service that has been running over the last two years. The dry recyclables and garden waste were collected on alternate weeks while residual waste was collected weekly.

Because of the popularity of the scheme over the last eight months the council has now decided to swap the frequencies of the recyclables and residual waste collections in part of the city.

The 2,400 households in Dyce will have their recyclable waste collected once a week, while their residual waste will be collected on alternate weeks opposite the garden waste collection.

Experience
Clare Neely, waste minimisation officer at Aberdeen city council, said: “People have been recycling in the city for so long, so we don't believe there will be many problems changing to a new scheme.

“At the moment we are just working on making sure the accompanying leaflets and information is ready as soon as possible so the residents are given plenty of warning before the scheme rolls out,” she added.

The new service is being introduced following the success of recycling initiatives across the city, including a network of recycling points, and an attitude survey run by the Scottish Executive.

Last year Aberdeen city's recycling rate increased by almost six percentage points as well reducing the waste produced by households by 1.5 percentage points. Aberdeen currently has a recycling rate of 14% with a target to reach 25% by the end of 2005/06.

Aberdeen received 25 million from the Scottish Executive in 2003 to improve its recycling up to 2020 – about 1.8 million each year.