Angus waste bins WON’T be collected if they contain too much recycling in council shake-up

Glass will be binned from kerbside bins as part of the bid to save Angus Council £500,000 a year.

By Graham Brown

September 20 2023, 12:55pm

Kerbside collection changes in Angus have been delayed. Image: Kim Cessford/DC Thomson

Angus will become the first council in Scotland to refuse to empty waste bin containing too much recycling under new proposed plans.

The council will also move to monthly recycling collections in a multi-million pound shake-up of its kerbside bin service.

The changes aim to save the council £500,000 a year and will go before councillors on Thursday.

If a general waste bin is found to contain too many recyclable items it will be tagged and left uncollected in a bid to crack down on “contamination”.

Leading recycler

Angus has been one of Scotland’s top performing councils for recycling over a number of years.

Rubbish collection is the council’s third biggest spend – behind education and social care.

But costs have rocketed and the area’s recycling rate is slipping back.

And a recent survey found more than half the contents of the average Angus purple bin – for general waste – could have been recycled.

The changes have come out of a kerbside recycling review launched last year.

They will be funded by £2.8 million from the Scottish Government’s Recycling Improvement Fund.

There will be a new blue bin for paper and card.

And glass will be banned from kerbside bins.

Instead, the number of recycling points across the district will increase dramatically.

There are currently only 23 and the plan is to increase that to almost 200.

What does it mean for you?

This table sets out the changes being introduced.

Angus Council kerbside collections — What the new look kerbside collection system will look like. Image: Angus Council

Waste chief Graeme Dailly admits the policy of tagging purple bins will be “challenging” for his workforce.

But he says residents are costing the council £1m a year by not putting their rubbish in the correct bin.

“While some other Scottish local authorities do have bans on putting recycling in non-recyclable waste bins, we are not aware of any applying a contamination policy in practice,” he will tell communities committee councillors on Thursday.

“It is recognised that applying the policy will be challenging when staff can only see the top fraction of the bin they are emptying.

“It will only be applied when there is an unacceptable level of recyclables found and a procedure will be developed that aims to educate and raise awareness before bins are left unemptied. ”

He also wants to see more food waste being recycled.

Food caddy collection totals fell by nearly 300 tonnes last year.

The council say that is partly a reflection of less food being wasted by people in the cost-of-living crisis.

But they also found more than a third of rubbish in general waste bins was food.