Aberdeen City Council (ACC) has begun trialling co-mingled collections in parts of the city, to ‘help the city council to plan for the introduction of mixed recycling collections city-wide’ in 2015.

In May, the council announced that it was to move from dual-stream to fully co-mingled collections to ‘significantly increase [its] recycling rates and… drastically reduce [its] landfill costs’ and ‘allow residents to put all recyclable materials into one container’.

The new system, which sees recyclable materials placed in a 240-litre co-mingled bin and then emptied into a standard refuse collection vehicle (instead of the current kerbside recycling vehicle), has been in operation in parts of Deeside, Queen's Cross and Kingswells and will be trialled in other areas of the city ‘over the coming weeks’.

Materials collected are taken to the council's interim transfer facility at East Tullos, before going on to UPM’s Shotton materials recovery facility (MRF) near Chester for separation and recycling. However, the council has committed £28 million for the development of new infrastructure and recycling services, including its own MRF, expected to be operational in ‘late 2016’; an in-vessel composting (IVC) facility to produce fertiliser from food waste collections; and a refuse-derived fuel (RDF) facility (until the council develops an energy-from-waste (EfW) facility in the area to recover heat and electricity from the waste).

Reasons behind co-mingling approach

ACC currently operates a fortnightly, dual-stream kerbside-sort collection of dry recycling to approximately 70 per cent of households in the city.

Those eligible for the service use a box to recycle glass bottles and jars, food and drinks cans, foil, aerosols and plastic bottles, and a bag to recycle paper and cardboard.

However, the council has said that the 70-litre box and bag system is ‘no longer fit for purpose’, and that ‘residents need more space in a container that is protected from the weather’. It has therefore decided to move to ‘wheeled bin based mixed recycling collection, starting in 2015’.

Despite the new Waste (Scotland) Regulations stating that local authorities should provide the occupier of every domestic property in their areas with ‘such receptacles as will enable the separate collection of dry recyclable waste from the property’, there is a caveat that states that co-mingled collections would only be permissible after 1 January 2014 if the authority ‘considers that the amount of material recycled from such waste in its area will not be significantly less, and the quality of the material recycled will not be significantly lower, than would be the case were the authority to comply’.

ACC previously told Resource that it believes co-mingling is the ‘only way to comply with the statutory obligation in the [regulations] to provide a recycling collection to all households (including the >50 per cent in the city living in flats or tenements)’, but acknowledged that it could have ‘challenges in meeting the quality element of the Scottish Government's approach’.

However, the spokesperson added that he believes that ‘by the application of the best available processing techniques, [the council] can achieve both quality and quantity in recycling’.

‘Collecting recycling material in this way is quicker and cheaper’

Speaking on Friday, Zero Waste Management Sub-Committee Convener Councillor Jean Morrison said: "Residents can be assured that all the material that they put out for recycling – tins, paper, card, glass and plastic – is still being recycled, even though they are seeing it go into the back of a normal bin lorry. There will be no drop in standards as a result of changing the methods of collection during the trial.

"Early results are showing us that collecting recycling material in this way is quicker and cheaper than sorting it at the kerbside. The rounds are being completed in less time than normal, allowing crews to be redeployed to other collections."

Morrison added that "expanding and improving recycling collections is a key priority for the city council and trying out different options is an important part of ensuring the new service works effectively and efficiently for everybody".

The information gained from the trials will reportedly help the city council to plan for the introduction of mixed recycling collections citywide.

Find out more about Aberdeen’s decision to switch to a co-mingled system.