Blue bin collections are about to get underway in the final part of Angus Council’s kerbside recycling shake-up.
The new bins, for cardboard and paper, are being delivered to homes in the Brechin and Montrose area.
It includes communities in the remote reaches of Glen Esk and Glen Lethnot.
Blue bins are delivered to residents on the day that their grey bin would normally be collected.
The council said it will take around two weeks to deliver all the bins, and four weeks from receiving a bin for it to be emptied as part of the new changes.
Blue bin scheme delayed
The move completes a scheme which started in Arbroath in June last year – three months behind schedule.
Forfar and Kirriemuir followed last autumn.
But there was widespread opposition to an additional wheelie bin for local households.
A ban on glass in household recycling was the most controversial element of the redesign.
Bottles and jars must now be disposed of at more than 120 glass recycling points across Angus.
The £3m cost – including more than 65,000 new blue bins – was funded by the Scottish Government.
New food waste trucks and a ‘rubbish tsar’ to oversee the changes were also part of the spend.
It is hoped the changes will save the council £500,000 a year.
However, it could be 18 months before the authority learns if the new scheme has stemmed a decline in Angus recycling.
Latest figures show the overall recycling rate for 2023 was 46.9%.
The figure is 0.6% less than the previous year, and an almost 7% drop over five years.
The data includes reasons behind the decline.
Those include the impact of Covid-19 and a dry summer in 2022 which led to less garden waste.
Household recycling showed a marginal 0.4% uplift to stand at 52.1% in 2023. That also mirrored a 7% drop since 2019.
When will we learn the recycling figures for 2024?
Council waste director Graeme Dailly says household waste data for 2024 is currently being prepared for submission to the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA).
But it could be nearer the end of this year – around October – before the information is released.
And the full picture of the new kerbside scheme’s impact may not be known until much later in 2026.
“The 2024 data will assist analyses of the changes brought by the revised KRS,” he says in a recycling report to next week’s communities committee.
“Though it should be noted that the full picture relating to the bin changes will not be available until after the roll-out is fully complete i.e. 2025 data is available.”
How does Angus fare against other councils for recycling?
Angus was Scotland’s top recycling council in 2020.
It continues to perform well above the national average for all 32 local authorities. But the drop in overall recycling has led to a slide to seventh in the league table.
Mr Dailly adds: “Angus Council has been among the authorities landfilling the smallest percentage of waste, ranking either 30 or 31 between 2019 and 2023.”
It has also consistently placed in the top two of a ‘family group’ of councils which are similar in area and population.
These include Clackmannanshire, Inverclyde, South Lanarkshire and West Lothian.
Conversation