EIR Request - Recycling Contamination

Request 101002159514

1. Please tell me the estimated amount of recyclable waste that your local authority has had to send to landfill due to contamination caused by the presence of non-recyclable waste.

It would be preferable if you were able to provide the estimated amount in tonnes, however, if that is not possible, please instead provide it in whatever way your local authority measures it (loads, bin-fulls, skip-fulls, etc).

Please break down your response by calendar year, since and including 2015, and with the most up-do-date figures for 2019.

2. Finally, please tell me, (again broken down by calendar year, since and including 2015, and with the most up-do-date figures for 2019), the estimated costs of sending said contaminated recyclable waste to landfill.

Response 23-05-2019

1. In accordance with section 10(4)(a) of the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 please be advised that we do not record the number of contaminated recycling bins.

Given that our mixed cans & plastics are segregated at our own Materials Recycling Facility (MRF) in Lossiemouth, we know that we do not have contamination issues with the loads of materials (plastics type 1&2, aluminium cans, steel cans) that we send to our reprocessors.

With regards to our cardboard and mixed papers, we have only had contamination problems reported by our reprocessors four times in the last 5 years, resulting in 5 tonnes  of card being rejected and land filled.

2. Our reprocessor disposed of the contaminated load. In accordance with section 10(4)(a) of the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 we can confirm that no costs have been recorded