Waste and Recycling - Latest News and Campaigns Archive

• Waterford Recycling Centre Open Day
• National Recycle Week
• Room by Room - Recycling Guide Addition
• Arrange a Litter Pick
• Council Clampdown on Uncollected Refuse Bins
• Zero Waste Scotland - Sort-it
• Helping to Reduce, Reuse and Recycle
• Campaigns
• Children's Christmas Recycling Crossword
• Zero Waste Week
• REPIC Electrical Giveaway

Waterford Recycling Centre Open Day

Have you ever wondered what happens to your household waste and recycling after you have dropped it off at the recycling centre? Or unsure what all materials you can take to the recycling centre?
To find out, why not come along to our open day at Waterford Recycling Centre, Forres on Saturday 6th September from 10am – 3pm. The recycling Team from Moray Council will be giving tours of the new look  recycling centre and will guide you through what happens to each of the different types of materials once they have been disposed of at the site, as well as demonstrating why we need people to do a little recycling at the centres! Tours will take place every half an hour and should take approximately 20 minutes.  As well as the tour there will be information stands, games, prizes and craft activities for children, not to mention your chance to get a close up look at our waste and recycling wagons in action.
So why not come along and have some fun while finding out about waste and recycling.

Back to top

National Recycle Week

Moray Council’s recycling team will be out in force at the area’s main recycling centre during National Recycle Week which begins on Monday 16th June 2014.

At first sight it might appear an unusual place to encourage people to recycle.

However, a recent audit of a household waste skip at the Chanonry recycling centre in Elgin revealed that a very high level of recyclable materials were being wrongly deposited in the container.

The skip contained over 600kgs of recyclable materials – around 40% of its total contents. If that was reflected across all five main recycling centres in Moray it would mean that £100,000 was being wasted annually in landfill tax.

In an attempt to highlight the issue, the recycling team will be on hand at Chanonry for most of next week speaking to visitors and making sure that materials are put into the correct containers.

A spokesman for the team said: “The most common materials to be wrongly put into the landfill skip are clothes and textiles. The audit found that just under 250kgs of these materials had been put in the household waste skip instead of the textile banks that are also on site.

“Clothes of any condition can be placed into these textile banks and any that are not good enough to be worn again are recycled into new products. When they are sent to landfill these materials break down and create high levels of greenhouse gases, so it is very important to make sure that none are put into the landfill skip.”

The recycling team will also be handing out a new leaflet that has been designed to encourage people to get the most out of the recycling centres.

Funded by Zero Waste Scotland, the leaflet highlights the correct procedures that should be taken by members of the public when visiting the sites and will hopefully encourage them to recycle even more and help cut down on the landfill tax that Moray Council must pay for every tonne of waste that is sent to its landfill site at Dallachy.

Back to top

Room by Room - Recycling Guide Addition

While we appreciate that most people are good at recycling at home, our audits of household waste bins show there is still more that could be done. An audit carried out in April 2014 revealed that 51% of the average household waste bin was still made up of recyclable material, costing us around £3000 extra per day to send to landfill. 

To try and help you get even more from your recycling service we have designed a Room by Room guide showing all materials and items from each room in the house that should be getting recycled, either by using your own recycling containers or at your nearest recycling centre. We have added this new Section to the Recycling Guide.

For further information please contact waste@moray.gov.uk or telephone 01343 557045.

Back to top

Arrange a Litter Pick

Council Clampdown on Uncollected Refuse Bins

Moray Council binmen will no longer return to collect bins reported as missed by householders.

The move is being made because of the cost implications and pressures on available resources.

Return visits to collect missed refuse and recycling bins will only be made in exceptional circumstances after February 3.

Non-return for missed bins already features in the council’s kerbside collection policy but will now be strictly enforced as financial pressures increase.

It costs the council an average of £25 every time a crew is sent to empty a bin which a householder has reported as uncollected.

Councillor John Cowe, who chairs Moray Council’s economic development and infrastructure services committee, said the council serviced approximately 42,000 properties each week.

“Unfortunately we receive an average of 12 to 15 calls a week from residents reporting missed bin collections.

“While some reports of missed bins are genuine, it has become evident that many reports of missed collections are not actually missed at all. The position is that if bins are not put out on time, they will not be collected.

“The costs of returning for missed bins are significantly more than those associated with a scheduled collection. With government cuts at an unprecedented level, it is unreasonable that the council spends such amounts of money on missed collections.”

Householders are being reminded that all waste and recycling containers should be put out for collection at the kerbside no later than 7.30am on collection day.

Uncollected waste or recyclable items can be deposited free of charge at any of the staffed recycling centres at Forres, Elgin, Buckie, Keith and Nether Dallachy, while any uncollected recycling can be deposited at local recycling points throughout Moray.

Householders are asked to note that in the event of a bin being missed for whatever reason, no excess waste will be uplifted on the next scheduled collection day.

Collection days and the location of recycling facilities, along with opening times, can be found online at www.moray.gov.uk

Councillor Cowe said: “I look forward to the public’s co-operation in helping reduce the costs incurred in returning for missed bins and I thank everyone for their support in all waste and recycling related matters, especially during these times of ever-decreasing resources.”

Back to top

Zero Waste Scotland - Sort-it

Zero Waste Scotland has launched an improved version of their popular ‘Sort It’ website. This is designed to make it easier for the Scottish public to reduce, reuse and recycle more of their household waste Read more about sorting your waste.  Click here to visit the newly designed Sort-it website
 

Towards Zero Waste The Scottish Government has published its first Zero Waste Plan which details the actions and steps that will drive Scotland towards a zero waste society. The plan was unveiled by Cabinet Secretary for the Environment and Rural Affairs Richard Lochhead and introduces the idea of landfill bans on certain materials to encourage prevention and reuse, as well as stating that a waste prevention programme will be developed for all waste in Scotland.

You can read the full Zero Waste Plan here.

Back to top

Helping to Reduce, Reuse and Recycle

The Moray Council continues to strive to maintain a high recycling rate.  To help encourage everyone in the area to Reduce, Reuse and Recycle as much as they can, the council works in partnership with the National Waste Aware Scotland Campaign. Details of recent campaigns, including the Reduce Unwanted Mail and Love Food Hate Waste Campaigns can be found on the Zero Waste Scotland website. This can also provide resources and information about other ways to help protect our environment by reducing the amount of waste going to landfill.

Back to top

Campaigns

Love Food Hate Waste - Over £1 billion worth of food is wasted by consumers in Scotland each year. That's an average of £430 per household! If we stopped wasting all this food we could prevent the equivalent of 1.7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide each year in Scotland. This is the same as taking 1 in 4 cars off the road. For information on reducing your food waste, including advice and recipes from some of Scotland's top chefs and food writers please visit www.wasteawarelovefood.org.uk

Back to top

Children's Christmas Recycling Crossword

Below are the answers to the crossword that was in the local papers at Christmas time.

Back to top

Zero Waste Week

A reminder that Zero waste week takes place 1-7th September 2014 with the theme 'One More Thing!' One of the days will be focusing solely on food waste. Why not sign up and pledge to take the challenge? You could save over £60 a month on your grocery bill and pick up some great tips and ideas along the way. Find out more and register

Back to top

REPIC Electrical Giveaway 

Local schools, community groups and good causes - such as not-for-profit organisations and registered charities - across Moray were given the chance to win £1,000 worth of new electrical products as part of a new responsible recycling initiative. The community prize pot was put forward by not-for-profit Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) recycling scheme, REPIC, in partnership with Moray Council. The closing date for applications was 27^th June 2014.

Visit Repic Responsible Recycling to find out all about recycling your old electricals, what happens to them and where you can recycle them!

Back to top