Do your bit during Recycle Week
The City of Edinburgh Council is encouraging residents to get involved in Recycle Week, which started yesterday. The week, which is co-ordinated by Zero Waste Scotland, aims to get everyone in Scotland recycling more by raising awareness of its benefits and promoting easy ways to do more.
A whole host of action is taking place across Scotland, with the City of Edinburgh Council lending its support to the campaign and encouraging others to follow suit.Over the next week the Council will be encouraging residents to make more use of the recycling facilities available to them such as using community recycling centres, donating unwanted furniture to charities or recycling all their food scraps.
The Council is constantly looking at ways of increasing recycling in the city. Two pilot projects to improve recycling provision for city tenements and flats in the Hillside and Bellevue areas of the city have seen the amount of some materials recycled increase by up to 300%.
In addition the kerbside recycling service rolled out to more than 140,000 homes in 2014 and 2015 – has seen the amount of waste recycled increase by 29% in 2015/16 compared to 2014/15. Houses involved in the service also produced 51% more food waste recycling in 2015/16 than in 2014/15, with the tonnage of food waste collected increasing at each phase of its roll out.
The upturn has contributed to a city-wide drop of 10% in the amount of waste sent to landfill since 2014/15, while the average city-wide rate of recycling has grown by 2.9% over the last year.
Councillor Lesley Hinds, Environment Convener, said: “We have made great strides in the past couple of years in increasing our recycling rates and this week is a great opportunity for people to take advantage of the many options on offer across the city.
“Whether it is starting to recycle your food waste which we turn into fertiliser, taking your DIY waste to our community recycling centres or arranging for a charity to collect and reuse your unwanted furniture and white goods I would urge everyone to take up the recycle challenge.”
Iain Gulland, Chief Executive of Zero Waste Scotland said: “Recycle Week is all about mobilising action and getting as many people across Scotland to recycle more. Recent years have seen recycling becoming much more commonplace across the country, but we could all be doing a little bit more.
“Whether it’s running an event in your workplace, or starting to recycle food waste at home, Recycle Week is a great time to commit to picking up a new habit and helping Scotland move towards our ambitious targets.
“It’s great to see the City of Edinburgh Council taking part, and I would encourage local authorities, businesses, community groups, schools and universities to get involved and sign up for Recycle Week.”
Residents can also follow activity and share messages throughout the week at the Recycle for Scotland Facebook page or using #RecycleWeekScot on Twitter.
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