Teething problems hit Edinburgh AWC roll out

Edinburgh city council has increased its workforce in a bid to reduce a backlog of missed collections after it moved to a fortnightly residual waste service earlier this month.

As of September 10, the council stopped collecting residual waste on a weekly basis and instead began collecting it on alternate weeks to garden waste (see letsrecycle.com story). Food waste collections remained weekly, as did dry recyclables which are collected by contractor Palm Recycling.

But, less than three weeks after the new service began, the council has said it is experiencing teething problems which has resulted in a number of collections being missed. The local authority said this was mainly due to changes in shift patterns for its refuse collection workers as well as new collection routes.

A spokeswoman for the council told letsrecycle.com today (September 28): On the whole the managed collections are going well. The issues are we are having come from changing the bin mens shift patterns and the routes. Obviously with staff being unfamiliar with the routes they miss some of the bins. It is mostly the communal containers in developments. We are not seeing any problems with residents adapting to fortnightly collections.

Delays

An update from the council explained that whilst there are some delays with collections for residual waste, food waste and garden waste, the majority of problems are occurring with communal bins such as those used by businesses and residents in flats.

The update states: There are delays as crews familiarise themselves with the location of housing development bin shelters and trade waste bins and adjust to the new routes.

“Examples of issues that crews are dealing with include trade bins that are not presented outside the designated address. E.g. picked up in adjoining lanes or at the rear of the property and large developments, with complex numbering systems, that make it difficult to identify the bins relating to these properties.

Meanwhile it said that the collection of recyclables by Palm Recycling was operating as normal.

Palm collects the dry recyclables through a series of bags and boxes. Glass and metals are collected in a blue box; paper in a blue bag; textiles in a textile bag; batteries in a clear bag; cardboard in a red box; and plastics in a clear plastic bag.

Workforce

In a bid to reduce the backlog, the council has increased its resources workers and vehicles by 30%, which it is hoping to be sorted by the end of next week.

The council said it had anticipated initial problems with the service and was aware that it was likely to require extra staff to help. The supply staff are from recruitment agency Blue Arrow. Edinburgh said it is already seeing a drop off in the number of complaints and calls it is receiving about the service.

Changes

Edinburgh councils environment convener, councillor Lesley Hinds said: We understand that this is one of the biggest changes to bin collections in recent years and obviously we’ll have to give people time to get used to the new arrangements. It was anticipated there would be some difficulty as the new changes bedded in and we have extra resources to cope with this. In the first week 90% of waste collections were on time and we are working to deal with any outstanding issues.

Big changes like the ones we have implemented rarely go perfectly the first time, but please be assured that we are addressing these issues and I am confident that in the coming days these problems will be ironed out.

The council said it introduced the changes in a bid to help it meet Scotlands national recycling targets which include a recycling 50% of waste by 2013, 70% by 2025 with a maximum of 5% waste sent to landfill. The non-statutory targets were detailed in the Scottish Governments Zero Waste Plan, which was published in June 2010 (see letsrecycle.com story).

Councillor Hinds added that despite the delays, the council remained on track to meet these targets.