No Green City

Feb 17 2008 By Steve Dinneen

Glasgow Shamed As Scots Recycle Record 1m Tonnes

IT MIGHT be the dear green place - but Glasgow is rubbish at recycling.

Scotland's smallest council area, Clackmannanshire, is the best because it re-uses nearly half of its refuse.

Most of Glasgow's waste still ends up in landfill with barely one fifth making it to a reprocessing centre.

The city's poor performance was highlighted as it was revealed a record one million tonnes of Scotland's garbage was recycled last year.

That is the equivalent of 150,000 double-deckers full of aluminium, glass, paper, plastic and scrap metal.

Most of Scotland's 32 councils pass rubbish to commercial firms - saving millions in landfill charges.

Environment secretary Richard Lochhead said: "There is muchmore to do. Householders can home compost, reject junk mail, re-use carrier bags and avoid food waste.

"But I have also called for a greater focus on reducing commercial and industrial waste."

Environment campaigners warn Scotland lags behind the rest of Europe.

Recycle Scotland said: "We still put a huge amount of material to landfill and this is terrible for the environment. Not enough is being done to force big business into line."

Glasgow City Council said the high number of people living in tenements makes it harder to sort and collect household waste.

They added: "We have the largest population and volume of rubbish, making it difficult to process all of it."

But Clackmannanshire Council said: "We have difficulties, too.

"For example, Clackmannanshire is divided into villages, making collection more time consuming."

BINNERS AND LOSERS

This table shows the percentage of waste recycled or composted by the 32 Scottish local authorities.

Aberdeen 21.9

Aberdeenshire 25.2

Angus 31.5

Argyll & Bute 33.3

Clackmannanshire 42.8

Dumfries & Galloway 28.0

Dundee 31.6

East Ayrshire 37.9

East Dunbartonshire 33.1

East Lothian 33.2

East Renfrewshire 32.3

Edinburgh 25.3

Western Isles 20.9

Falkirk 35.7

Fife 34.5

Glasgow 17.5

Highland 27.9

Inverclyde 20.4

Midlothian 33.3

Moray 39.8

North Ayrshire 27.2

North Lanarkshire 28.6

Orkney 27.3

Perth & Kinross 35.3

Renfrewshire 28.8

Borders 30.3

Shetland Islands 19.8

South Ayrshire 41.2

South Lanarkshire 37.2

Stirling 36.8

West Dunbartonshire 32.6

West Lothian 35.8

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