City plans recycling service for food waste

A FOOD waste service which will see Edinburgh residents put their slops out alongside their recycling is set to be launched for thousands of homes within months.

The council is planning to introduce the pilot scheme as early as April by handing out sealed lockable boxes and special biodegradable bin liners to an initial 20,000 properties.

Should the scheme prove a success, it will then be extended to all 235,000 homes across the Capital by late 2013.

The move is a bid by the council to cut its landfill tax bill, which is set to rise to 12 million a year by 2014, and comes after the Scottish Government introduced tough new targets that will see a ban on binning biodegradable waste by 2017.

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Councillor Robert Aldridge, the city's environment leader, said: "Lowering the amount of rubbish we send to landfill is everyone's responsibility. It reduces waste, helps the environment and saves money.

"Residents will see a difference in the level of service offered, with more collections. Food waste will be collected weekly and there will be more opportunity to recycle other household items."

Plastic bottles and food waste are currently said to make up the majority of rubbish left in bins in Edinburgh after recycling facilities have been used for other materials.

A second bin will also be provided to residents to allow them to recycle plastic bottles.

The council estimates that around 750 tonnes of food waste will be recycled in the first year of the scheme, rising to 20,000 tonnes annually by 2014/15.

The food waste, which will be turned into compost, is likely to be taken to a privately-run facility at Braehead, which is already used by the council for garden waste.

There are also plans for Midlothian Council to use a similar scheme, with all the waste produced by both councils eventually being sent to the planned recycling site at Millerhill.

But Green councillor Alison Johnstone said it was wrong to focus simply on recycling.

She said: "It is really important that recycling should be the third step in the process - people need to reduce the amount of waste they produce and try and reuse food scraps.

"We need to be more careful about what we buy, especially at Christmas and New Year when people tend to get a bit carried away."

Last year it emerged the council was looking at introducing financial incentives to encourage recycling, in line with some other British local authorities.