The trial introduction of kerbside communal bins in Bellevue and Hillside has seen the amount of glass recycled rise by 300 per cent, and the amount of mixed materials increase by 38 per cent.
The figures released by City of Edinburgh Council yesterday emerge from analysis of its two pilot schemes, the Broughton part of which replaced the old red and blue bins formerly presented by tenement and flat dwellers.
Increasing recycling
How much is collected partially depends on convenience, by which we understand how close the recycling bins are to people’s homes. (If we’ve understood that correctly, it comes as no surprise and is a good argument for providing more of them.) Contamination of landfill and recycling bins with the wrong kind of material reduces when they’re positioned next to each other, and could be reduced further in Bellevue by reducing the size of the recycling bins’ apertures.
In April this year, CEC announced that the amount of citywide waste sent to landfill had fallen by 10 percent since 2014/15. It wants to see a 44.4 per cent rise in recycling rates across Edinburgh by the end of this year, and hopes to increase the proportion of mixed recycling bins to ‘no less than 40% of the total capacity if it can be shown that this will not adversely affect the amenity of the surrounding area’.
Overall success but some failings
The various figures emerged in a report to the Transport and Environment Committee (see pdf at foot of page).
Whilst pronouncing the experiments successful, the report does acknowledge two particular shortcomings in Bellevue and describes them as ‘unacceptable’:
- Vehicles breaking down
- Collection crews uplifting both kinds of rubbish at the same time and so mixing them up together.
The second of these was something Spurtle complained long and loud about at the time, but which was denied by officials on more than occasion. The report now describes it as a ‘crew training issue … [that] would not be expected to occur in a situation where recycling was routinely being collected in this type of bin’.
Missing from the list of shortcomings are the often shambolic arrangements for communicating information to the public, and Council staff’s repeated mistakes/ignorance concerning how many recycling bins it has, where they are situated, and when they are meant to be collected. Thankfully, anecdotal evidence suggests these issues have been less evident over recent months.
Future waste recycling policy will depend on whether CEC adopts the Scottish Government’s recent Code of Practice, developed with Zero Waste Scotland and the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (CoSLA).
That document calls for paper and card to be collected separately from cans, plastics and drinks cartons – which would be a shame inasmuch as the convenience of throwing them all into one container was integral to whatever success the Bellevue pilot enjoyed.
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