Following a comprehensive review of kerbside recycling in Perth and Kinross, council chiefs believe they have the answer to the system’s inadequacies but admit they could yet be wrong.
The success of the local authority’s garden and household waste recycling service has proved something of a double-edged sword, with the amount of rubbish increasing from 1000 tonnes to 1900 tonnes in just one year. Such was the scale of food and garden waste, the council had to cut back on collections last summer to cope with the amount of rubbish arriving at its recycling depots leaving many residents furious.
To address the difficulties the council’s environment committee has now agreed a package of changes to provide additional capacity for the service. An additional £45,000 bin lorry is to be bought, while a further vehicle will be made available through a reorganisation of how vehicles are MOT tested.
Over the next 12 months the existing fleet of four vehicles will be replaced with new, larger capacity lorries to better meet demand. Other changes are to be made to the amount and type of items that can be recycled in the new bins.
Items such as books and telephone directories have already been added for the first time and items such as empty aerosol cans and certain plastics, which previously could not be recycled, are set to follow. A leaflet is being compiled by the council and will soon be sent out to all households in the area to inform them of the changes.’Green ceiling’With hundreds of houses set to be built across the area over the next five years, Councillor Ian Campbell questioned whether the changes went far enough. “There will be a sizeable growth in Perth and Kinross over the next few years, with many new houses planned, and I wonder whether we are already at the ‘green ceiling’,” he said.
Committee convener Alan Grant admitted the councillor could be correct but said he believed the plans outlined were the way forward. He welcomed how well residents in Perth and Kinross have supported the drive to recycle and divert waste from landfill.
And he said it was important the council do everything it can to make recycling easy, saying that “having gotten people out of the habit of putting recyclable items in general waste, the last thing we want to do is push people back into that.” However, he also told the committee that funding for recycling was by no means limitless and he called on the public to play an even greater role to ensure the scheme is workable and successful.
“People need to become more self-reliant when it comes to their waste, whether that means home composting or taking their waste to a recycling centre. We can only do so much we need to get people to understand that they have a responsibility too.
“To make unlimited the amount of waste that can be collected is simply not affordable. We have to say to people that we can only handle so much.
“We have looked at the likely growth in households over the next five years and we think that the capacity detailed in this report is enough to deal with it. There is no definitive way of knowing whether we have got this right. We could still be wrong.”
Mr Grant promised the situation would be closely monitored.
Photo used under a Creative Commons licence courtesy of Flickr user stevendepolo.