Edinburgh kerbs food waste collection trials
13 April 2011 The City of Edinburgh council has launched a pilot scheme for kerbside food waste collections from households in the Scottish capital with a view to rolling out the service to all homes by late 2013.
The local authority has this week (April 12) initiated a weekly collection for 20,000 households, including 15,000 residential and 5,000 tenement properties.
Participating residents have been supplied with a sealed, lockable food waste collection caddy. It is expected that the scheme will collect 750 tonnes of food waste in its first year, rising to 2,000 tonnes by the end of the two-year pilot period.
Material collected under the pilot scheme will be sent to the Deerdykes anaerobic digestion and in-vessel composting facility at Cumbernauld, which is operated by Scottish Water Horizons.
The service is intended to be rolled out to all 235,000 households in the Scottish capital once the pilot has been completed. The city council aims to have completed the pilot by late 2013.
The pilot is intended to help lay the foundations for an interim food waste treatment contract currently being introduced by the city council.
This interim treatment measure is set to cover disposal of material as Edinburgh continues procuring long-term anaerobic digestion treatment capacity in partnership with neighbouring Midlothian council (see letsrecycle.com story).
The service also helps Edinburgh to align itself with the ambitions of the Scottish Government’s Zero Waste Plan, which requires all Scottish local authorities to introduce separate food waste collections by 2013.
A spokeswoman for the council was unable to give an exact figure of how much the two-year pilot would cost the council but told letsrecycle.com: “We are confident the service will at worse cost no more than the collection and disposal of residual waste, and is likely to prove cheaper.”
Pilot
Commenting on the pilot, councillor Robert Aldridge, environmental leader at Edinburgh, said: “This is a pioneering service for local residents in Edinburgh. I’m glad to see the pilot begin. Food waste will be collected weekly and there will be more opportunity to recycle other household items.”
Cllr Aldridge said the pilot scheme represented “real potential for behavioural change” and he added that it was important for residents to be aware of environmental and economic impact of their recycling performance.
He said: “Lowering the amount of rubbish we send to landfill is everyone’s responsibility. We want Edinburgh to be a great place to live in and visit and these pilots are part of that.”
The council said that if it does not address food waste – alongside dry recycling – the cost of landfill and Landfill Tax will increase from £10.37 million in 2011 to £16.24 million by 2014. However, the city council is introducing measures to reduce this figure to £11.85 million.
Interim
Treatment of food waste in the city is set to be subject to a four year framework agreement, which was discussed at a meeting of the council’s finance and resources committee on March 29.
The framework agreement involves a total of five waste management and recycling companies being charged with treating and recycling organic waste in the city, however their exact roles within the framework agreement have not been revealed.
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Edinburgh city council
The five companies are: the aforementioned Scottish Water Horizons; West Lothian-based Levenseat; organics recycling firm TEG Environmental; Paisley-based William Tracey Group; and, waste management firm Viridor.
It was estimated that the total value of the framework agreement – known as the Framework Agreement for Food Waste Treatment (Interim Measure) – is set to be £2.75 million over the course of the four-year contract period.
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