Kerbside Recycling Best Practice

Working with Local Authorites, Remade Scotland undertakes an annual review of the performance of kerbside recycling schemes.

The data from the Kerbside Report for 07/08 is now avavialbe for Scottish Councils to interrogate based on the data provided and the analysis conducted by Remade This Benchmarking Tool allows Scottish Councils to compare both in tabular and graphical form, the performance of their Recycling Schemes in a variety of ways including:

* Collection Frequency of both Recyclate and Residual waste,
* Collection and Sorting method and by
* Material type

The Tool currently uses data from the 2007/2008 and will be updated once the analysis for 08/09 is complete.  Click here to logon to the Benchmarking Tool

Summary Findings

The review which commenced in 2007 has shown year on year improvements in the amount of material being captured. Indeed the following table highlights the four main operational factors which affect the performance of kerbside schemes.

Annual Report

The annual review is undertaken at the end of each financial year, and is produced and presented in conjunction with the Waste Aware Recycling Advisors Intervention Programme. The 2008 report was presented in June, and highlighted the wide range of performance of different recycling schemes. The detailed analysis of the schemes found that the average yield from a kerbside scheme is 2.02 kg/hh/wk. However the actual schemes vary from Council to Council from a low of 0.5 to a high in excess of 4.5kg/hh/wk.

In addition to the factors influencing scheme performance highlighted above, Scotland has diverse communities, from highly rural and remote settlements to some of the most densely populated areas in the UK. Different housing types, vehicle access and geographical spread, has meant that local authorities have introduced a range of schemes. Indeed some local authorities may offer several schemes to match housing types all of which affect final scheme performance.