Lockdown leads to massive food waste overspend for West Lothian Council

Robert Young, a senior service accountant, detailed the overspend in his six month monitoring report on the budget when he spoke to the council’s Environment PDSP.

His report said: “Tonnage levels have increased this year for landfill, brown bin and blue bin waste generating additional costs of £1.325 million. It is assumed that increased levels of tonnage will remain throughout 2020/21 due to changing behaviour as a result of the pandemic.”

Responding to a question from Councillor Diane Calder, Waste Services manager David Goodenough said there had been an increase of around 12 per cent in the tonnage of waste from blue and grey bins, while brown bins waste had risen by 23 to 24 per cent.

A West Lothian Council spokesperson said: “ Since the start of the pandemic, the council has continued to maintain its household recycling and waste collection services. If you compare the 41 week period from the first lockdown in March to date and hold it up against the same period in 2019, then you will see a significant percentage increase in the amount of material collected from the kerbside across the board.

“This can largely be attributed to the fact that people have been spending more time at home which is resulting in a natural increase in material generated per household.

“This increase is the main contributor to the increase in expenditure over the period.”