At its meeting on 17th June East Dunbartonshire Council unanimously supported the Motion detailed below and instructed that I communicated its content to the First Minister, our local MSPs and our List MSPs.
“We welcome the record of East Dunbartonshire Council and our communities on the level of recycling and diversion of rubbish from landfill compared to other Councils in Scotland.
This is backed up by the latest Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) figures which confirm that East Dunbartonshire recycled 55.3% of waste compared to a Scottish average of 44.9%, diverted 25.2% of waste from landfill while Scotland averaged 23.8%. This means that the amount that was landfilled was less than a fifth at 19.5% while Scotland averaged 31.3%.
We welcome the fact that all organic waste was diverted from landfill by 2020 which was a year before the original target set by the Scottish Government and 5 years before the relaxed target that was reset by the Scottish Government.
We note that a lot of our ordinary waste is in the form of food trays with symbols stamped on them that imply they are recyclable.
Recycling requires that there is a market for these food trays. Currently there is none.
The Council is aware of a recently launched consultation from Zero Waste Scotland to consider the future management of food packaging and
1 Calls on the Scottish Government, working through Zero Waste Scotland, and the UK Government to ensure that the producers of these food trays are responsible for dealing with these items to ensure that they can be recycled or removed entirely from the waste stream; and
2 Calls on the Scottish Government to ensure that it provides the necessary resources to this and other Councils where changes to recycling obligations introduce additional costs and resourcing requirements.”
As instructed on 17th June, this was communicated to the Scottish Government, whose response is appended for Members’ information.