Dundee’s contentious recycling policy has been hailed a success in leading to a rise in the volume of recyclable materials deposited at the city’s two refuse centres.
Environment convener Craig Melville said people had a heightened awareness of the importance of recycling and were making a greater effort to sort and correctly dispose of their discarded material.
“They are not simply throwing waste in the general skip as would previously have happened,” he said.
The SNP-led council controversially closed the Marchbanks recycling centre and restricted the type of waste deposited at Riverside and Marchbanks sites in a package of budget savings.
Making people take bulky garden waste only to Riverside and bulky household waste only to Baldovie proved deeply unpopular and after a deluge of criticism the council scrapped the restrictions.
In a detailed report by environment director Ken Laing on the impact of the new policy from April to July, it is revealed that the volume of green waste collected at Riverside reduced by 44% (400 tonnes) compared with the same period the previous year.
“This has been in part affected by the very slow start to the growing season in April and May due to the cold weather,” he said.
A significant number of additional brown bins were issued making it easier for people with smaller gardens to collect their green waste for collection and recycling.
“This has compensated largely for the reduction in green waste collected at the recycling centres with the overall tonnage of composted material collected at 3,868 tonnes,” he said.
“The equivalent figures for the same period of the two previous years was 3,959 and 3,834 tonnes.”
Overall the amount of recyclables collected increased across a range of materials with paper and card up 38%, electrical goods up 22%, glass up 9%, wood up 4% and other commodities up 3%.
Scrap metal reduced by 13% but this is thought to be a consequence of its high value and not the changes, with people realising they can make money from their old copper pipes and tanks.
Soil collection was down by 16% and this is thought to be a result of the changes.
Mr Laing reported no change in public behaviour towards the recycling of residual waste and concerns that the changes would create more fly-tipping have not been realised.
Mr Melville said: “It has been extremely encouraging that people have been sorting their waste and putting it in the correct boxes or bins. We hope the lifting of the restrictions does not affect people’s diligence in this regard.”