Home | News | Kerbside recycling to save money and planet: Council highlights the benefits of helping residents to recycle

News | 18th July 2019

Kerbside recycling to save money and planet: Council highlights the benefits of helping residents to recycle

A VISION to recycle more waste and send less to landfill has been agreed by Dumfries and Galloway councillors.
The council recently took waste services back in house.
It now intends to implement a kerbside recycling service for the first time.
At a meeting of the economy, environment and infrastructure committee members agreed the strategy for the waste collection and disposal service.
The proposals will need significant capital investment and this aspect will be referred to the policy and resources committee.
The report to members said the proposal’s affordability, including confirmation of the level of Scottish government funding, would also be made clear before the policy and resources committee met.
The objective is to reduce the council’s impact on the environment and fight climate change.
A key obligation in the council’s plan sets out the commitment to recycling by investing in key infrastructure, namely, a roll-out of a household recycling scheme.
Materials such as plastic, glass, metal, paper and card will be captured for closed-loop recycling, reducing the volumes of recyclates going to energy recovery or landfill.
The option agreed by members at the May meeting offers a service which is simple to deliver and to understand.
It will be flexible to deal with known changes, like a deposit return scheme, and unknown changes in the waste and recycling industry in the next few years.
Residual (black bag) waste will be collected fortnightly using existing wheelie bins or orange bags.
Monthly
Paper and card will be collected monthly as will metals (cans) and plastics. Glass will be deposited at community sites.
This means the black bag waste will be collected on weeks one and three, alternating with the collection of paper and card (week two) and metals and plastics (week four).
Food waste will be collected weekly in Dumfries, Stranraer, Dalbeattie, Annan, Lockerbie and Gretna.
This service avoids costs of £800,000, which would be incurred by collecting from every household, but covers 48 per cent of homes.
The volume of glass is likely to reduce once the Scottish government’s deposit return scheme is implemented.
It is thought that about 90 per cent of the glass currently collected as a recyclate will be eligible for the deposit scheme.
The scheme is estimated to achieve collection rates of 95 per cent so the volume of glass remaining for local authorities to collect will fall to levels where kerbside collection is unviable.
The residual (black bag) waste will continue to go to the Ecodeco plant in Dumfries for drying, shredding and refining, generally into a fuel suitable for use in energy from waste plants.
Dry recyclates will go to a new plant to be built at the Dumfries Zero Waste Park for sorting and bulking before onward sale or disposal.
The report said: “The roll-out of kerbside collection of dry recyclates needs consideration of how collected waste, including dry recyclates, is processed. The current method of waste disposal depends in part on where you live.
“Wigtown has a collection for dry recyclates and food waste very similar to that proposed.
All dry recyclates, along with any collected at community bring-sites and waste recycling centres are processed at the Stranraer Zero Waste Park.
“Markets are sought for all these waste streams and, while these fluctuate, the waste collected makes a small income.
Beyond the clear environmental benefits of recycling, the main benefit in terms of cost is avoiding landfill charges.”

Would you like to support us?

The Eskdale and Liddesdale Advertiser is our community owned local newspaper and even in today’s troubled times, we aim to bring you local news and articles in an impartial, responsible and factual way.

We hope you have enjoyed reading this free article but we need your support so we can keep delivering quality journalism that’s open and independent and keeps you up to date with what is happening in Eskdale and Liddesdale.

Every reader’s contribution, however big or small, is so valuable to us.

Donate Today

‘Owned by the Community...Published for the Community’ Do you have a story?

Please get in touch if you have a story or article you would like to see published.

Scottish government awards funding to 28 innovative projects

Join our mailing list
Keep up to date with all that’s going on at the E&L

Kerbside recycling to save money and planet: Council highlights the benefits of helping residents to recycle

Partnership secures £2.1m for the south

Jobless warning

Weaving company’s future in the balance

Defibs are going live

Helping to ease the burden

Mill’s billionaire owner crippling suppliers, claim

Rose’s Wardrobe makes lunar loveliness

Langholm hotelier backs VAT cut to five per cent

Six-figure grant will transform building

Buccleuch boss pledges to get project to the line

Bob: a Langholm luminary

Tourism resurgence

Restrictions are lifted as outbreak contained

Council implements post-virus recovery

Sports centre plans are top of the range

Tribute paid to armed forces past and present

Closure claim denied

Back to school

Langholm ride-outs will definitely be off

Designs ready to go to the public

Windfarm is poorly sited and designed

More rural housing options are needed

Villagers land £850k

Four months to raise £5.4m to buy our moor

Have your say on X95

£1m in grants to help rural schools connect

Essential work only on electricity cables

Delicate balancing act

Full steam ahead in Borders railway battle

EWM suppliers act over unpaid millions

Co-operative store’s fundraising fanatics

£34m given to help business stay afloat

Giant windfarm plan faces more opposition

Unpaid carers urged to get help with PPE

Crossing the border remains an anomaly

A monument to key workers

Virus hardship funds are open for business

Grand designs

Government may ease lockdown next week

Everything stops for tea