A report put to councillors outlined a breakdown of costs for the service, and claimed that retracting food waste services from rural areas would save an estimated £91,000 from the budget.
Council estimates show that the food waste service will be withdrawn from approximately 3,500 households located outside of towns and larger villages.
Currently treatment of the waste from these rural households costs the council around £12,000 per year. Once the collection service is removed, this will almost double to an estimated £23,000 due to the anticipated increase in food waste disposed of via the residual waste stream.
However, this increase will be offset by the resulting £102,000 saving from the reduction in staffing and transport costs needed to collect the waste.
The council estimates the difference in collection costs of collecting food waste from areas with the withdrawn service is £31 per household per year compared with £9 per household per year from all other collection areas.
Further savings
A garden waste charge is also to be introduced, as opposed to stopping the service, costing residents £1 per week per container, applying throughout the growing season at a cost of £25 per annum. The new charge is an opt-in service and it is anticipated that it will save taxpayers an estimated £378,000 pa.
The proposed closure of five recycling centres, in a bid to save an estimated £258,000, was deferred while ‘further options are explored’.
A spokesperson said: “In the current financial climate, the council has to make difficult decisions but is committed to still providing services for the residents of Angus.
“There will also be changes to the non-statutory food waste collection service as members agreed that the food waste collection is no longer economically sustainable for non-statutory areas and will only be provided to households in towns and larger villages.”
Collections
Angus council rolled out a weekly kerbside food waste collection in 2014, introducing two brown food caddies (one for indoor and one for outdoor) and around 52,000 households receive the service.
According to Waste (Scotland) Regulations, councils in Scotland are only legally required to provide a food collection for households in urban areas. However, in Angus, only seven main towns and Barry in Angus fall into this urban definition.
The council said that due to the ‘excessive distances’ travelled on some routes – continuing the service in rural areas does not offer value for money and is no longer ‘environmentally or economically sustainable’.
A waste composition study carried out by the council also suggested that it was not necessary to provide a larger general waste bin to the households whose collection service is to be withdrawn
Those who are to have the service removed but still wish to present their food waste for disposal will be able to use ‘bring sites’, which will be provided at sites such as existing recycling centres and neighbourhood recycling points.
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