The City of Edinburgh Council (CEC) has agreed a comprehensive action plan to improve the city’s waste and cleansing services.

Councillors rubber-stamped the 65-point ‘Waste and Cleansing Improvement Plan’ yesterday (1 November), which focuses on key areas including missed and delayed bin collections, the use and capacity of communal bins, and fly-tipping.

The council hopes the plan, which it aims to fully implement by May 2017, will enable a more efficient approach to managing waste in the city. Actions involve increasing bin and collection vehicle capacities and introducing new, successfully-piloted technology, such as bin sensors and route-mapping data.

The council’s waste and street-cleansing services have undergone a period of significant change over recent years, following alterations to collection frequencies and the introduction of food waste collections.

Only this summer the council reported that a new kerbside recycling service, rolled out to more than 140,000 households in November 2015, had increased recycling by 29 per cent in its first year. Additionally, a pilot trialling an improved flat recycling service earlier this year saw a 300 per cent increase in the amount of glass collected for recycling, while waste sent to landfill reduced by 50,000 tonnes in 2015/16.

Despite these developments, the council says there has been a decline in customer satisfaction in the services, as measured by the Edinburgh People Survey, and high numbers of complaints have been made regarding waste and recycling collections.

The council believes the provision of a high-quality reliable collection service, as outlined in the plan, will help participation in recycling. Edinburgh Council reported a recycling rate of around 41.7 per cent in 2015, just under the national average of 44.2 per cent, and with the Scottish Government setting a target of 70 per cent by 2025. The council to increase the city’s recycling rate rise to 44.4 per cent by the end of this year.

Break-down of the action plan

The ‘Waste and Cleansing Improvement Plan’ will see the council improvements, including:

• In-cab routing technology improves the route and bin location information given to crews to reduce missed bin collections;
• New larger collection vehicles to reflect increased participation in the service and the increased tonnages that need to be collected;
• Communal bin capacity and location is to be improved, as well as increasing supervision to tackle problems;
• Introduction of bin sensors that detect when street-litter bins are nearly full;
• Changes to uplift charges to reduce fly-tipping and improved information on how to dispose of larger items; and
• Investment in campaigns to promote social responsibility and community participation in keeping Edinburgh litter-free.

Councillor Lesley Hinds, Convenor of the CEC Transport and Environment Committee, said: “Waste and cleansing services are a real priority for the council, and we appreciate the frustration residents feel when their collections are missed or when they notice overflowing communal bins.

“This action plan will allow us to target hotspots and to focus our resources on tackling the biggest issues systematically, maintaining a clean and welcoming atmosphere for everyone.”

Reports from the Transport and Environment Committee are available on the Edinburgh Council website.