Falkirk Council veto fourth bin plan

Falkirk Council is working towards providing a rubbish service that will meet Scottish Government rules on recycling.

But when the executive met on Tuesday it rejected a plan to add another 240 litre container to the four-weekly kerbside rota by splitting the contents of the blue bin into seperate collections of paper and card and tins, plastics and cartons which would have helped it comply with the Household Recycling Charter which it has signed up for.

Instead councillors agreed to investigate other options and get feedback from councils already operating charter compliant services.

It costs around £500,000 a year to process the waste material collected in blue bins, known as co-mingled dry recyclate, but that could rise as the demand for higher quality product grows.

Rhona Geisler, director of development services, said the extra bin would be paid for by a £1.6 million grant from Zero Waste Scotland and the new system could save the council money.

She said: “Collecting the material seperately would potentially achieve a significant saving in running costs, mainly attributed to the lower cost of processing, but also linked to the operation efficiencies of having one wheeled bin collection a week.

“The charter compliant collection service outlined would enable the authority to access the funding available and reduce budgetary pressures. As the first signatory of the charter, providing this common collection system would meet our obligations.”