Fife is Scotland’s third best local authority when it comes to recycling.
The latest figures published by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) show that for the year 2010-11 Fife Council recycled 48.1% of its waste behind only Clackmannanshire and Falkirk.
During that period Fife recycled and composted more than 122,000 tonnes of rubbish, which resulted in a major financial boost, with nearly £7 million being saved in landfill tax payments and nearly £2 million earned from the sale of recyclable goods.
Chris Ewing, senior manager for sustainability at Fife Council, said the news was getting even better.
“The national figures for last year are to some extent old news. Our recycling performance continues to improve and now exceeds 50% for a full year.”
He continued: “This is a fantastic achievement and is down to the support that we get from householders the length and breadth of Fife.
“However, we need to keep on improving if we are to meet new government targets and make best use of valuable resources. So we’ve set ourselves the target of recycling and composting over 60% of the area’s waste by 2014.”
To meet that target Fife is rolling out a four-bin kerbside collection service to 150,000 households. Households already on the service can now recycle food, garden waste, cans, plastics, paper and cardboard at the kerbside.
Mr Ewing added: “We are getting recycling rates of up to 65% in the areas where this service has been provided and customer satisfaction rates of up to 90%. This makes us very confident that with the continued support of Fifers we can hit our 2014 target.”
SEPA’s figures show that Scotland’s local authorities recycled more than 38% of the municipal waste they collected between April last year and March this year. SEPA calculated the figures from data provided by local authorities on behalf of the Scottish Government, and releases the figures four times a year.
In 2010-11 38.2% of municipal waste collected by local authorities was recycled or composted, compared to 36.7% in 2009-10.