Bins bought for Dumfries and Galloway recycling scheme unneeded

Thousands of rubbish bins bought by a council are unlikely ever to be used for their intended purpose.

The local authority in Dumfries and Galloway purchased them to help meet its recycling targets in 2012.

However, a pilot household waste scheme in one part of the region has never been rolled out and the bins have been kept in storage ever since.

A report to the council said its plans for the future now meant hardly any of them would be needed.

Dumfries and Galloway Council operates a one wheelie-bin per household system in most of the region thanks to an Eco Deco plant which officially opened in 2007.

It separates waste, meaning homeowners do not have to.

New regulations

However, new regulations prompted the council to move back towards a multi-bin system which it began to pilot in Wigtownshire in 2014.

It has never been extended across the region as originally intended and a report has now recommended it never will be rolled out on the grounds of both cost and health and safety.

A new recycling system is being proposed instead which would only make use of a small number of the bins purchased seven years ago.

The now unneeded containers are branded with council logos meaning they could not be sold on to another local authority.

In 2017 it emerged that the council had spent more than £300,000 renting storage space for the unused bins and other recycling equipment.

Household waste is separated at the Eco Deco waste treatment plant

Councillors are being advised that rather than simply scrap the bins some of them could be given out to households to store glass to be taken to community collection points.

Options for the sale or recycling of other boxes will be examined and brought back to the council at a later date.

Meanwhile, the local authority hopes to agree new plans for household waste collection by the summer.

It would need the agreement to purchase 150,000 wheelie bins and a number of new vehicles to beginning rolling out the service from July 2020.