‘Push back’ from councils over flexible plastic recycling plans
SIC applies to join AI contaminated recycling trial
SHETLAND Islands Council (SIC) is “certainly not lying down” to the Scottish Government over an unpopular proposed change to its recycling collection.
The Scottish Government wants all Scottish local authorities to begin collecting flexible plastics, which can include clingfilm, crisp packets and sweetie wrappers, from homes over the coming years.
Currently these are dropped at collection points across Scotland, with the Tesco supermarket in Lerwick having a drop-off point.
SIC waste operations manager Brydon Gray said there had been a “fair bit of push back” from councils to plans for them to collect flexible plastics instead.
“They cost an absolute fortune to collect,” he told Monday night’s meeting of Lerwick Community Council (LCC)
“The Scottish Government is pushing us towards collecting this material, but the cost is excessive.”
He said it would cost a lot of extra money not only to collect, but to ship south as well.
Community councillor Duncan Swainston said this seemed like the Scottish Government “making a decision for the central belt”.
“There’s a complete lack of flexibility,” he said. “It doesn’t seem to work for Shetland.”
Gray responded that the SIC had been “arguing for months that it doesn’t really work” up here, and added that they were “certainly not lying down” to the government’s demands.
Other items that can be recycled as soft plastics include bread bags, plastic cereal bags and pet food pouches.
Gray was attending Monday night’s LCC meeting to give a presentation about the SIC’s waste operations work, and to answer any questions that members had.
Shetland could soon be taking part in an AI pilot scheme to identify which areas had worse levels of contaminated recycling, he said.
Gray told the meeting that the SIC had applied to be part of the pilot project, which would use a camera on the back of an essy kert to map out contamination levels and locations throughout Shetland.
He said in his presentation that this was being introduced in other countries, and would help the SIC target interventions for people to direct the right recycling to the right bins.
“We hope we get picked for it,” Gray added.
“We can identify what areas might have more contamination and see what we can do to combat that.”
He said the scheme was “not cheap to run”, so would be ideal for the SIC if was were selected for the pilot.
Gray also said the SIC was providing less communal bins throughout Shetland, and had been swapping some in certain areas for smaller bins.
This was because some people “just chuck everything in” and leave a mess for other residents, he explained.
Asked later if there was much fly tipping in Shetland, Gray said the SIC had nowhere near the level of issues that other councils in Scotland do.
“Our problems are minimal compared with other local authorities,” he added.
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