Recycling figure sets an all-time high...

Thanks to you, recycling in Edinburgh is at an all-time high with the city’s recycling rate reaching more than 29 per cent in June!

This is mainly due to a seasonal increase in garden waste recycling, but a big thank you goes out to all the great recyclers across the city.

And here’s what you’ve been doing:

• more than 11,000 tonnes of garden waste has been recycled between January and June through the brown bin scheme
• nearly 1,500 tonnes of garden waste has been brought to the community recycling centres between January and June
• more than 6,000 tonnes of cans, cardboard and glass have avoided going to landfill since the beginning of January thanks to you using all city-wide collections
• more than 8,000 tonnes of paper has been collected for recycling between January and June this year from the multi-material kerbside, tenement and recycling point schemes.

Paper recycling banks are now at more than 60 schools in the city, helping our future generations get in on the action.

With more than 800 paper banks across the city, there’s a huge amount of paper being recycled, and trees saved.

But there’s an issue with contamination in some paper banks – mainly in the tenement areas near the packaging banks.

Some users are putting cardboard and plastic into the paper banks and this contaminates the load, leading to problems at the paper recycling mill.

Please make a special effort to read the stickers on the banks and only recycle what materials are accepted.

Overall the city is still expanding the recycling services available, with 110,000 households receiving the multi-material collection and 100,000 receiving the garden waste collection.

Tenement recycling is also expanding with the next rollout due in October, enabling the majority of Edinburgh residents to have easy access to recycling.

Our average recycling rate, since April, is 27 per cent which means we’re on schedule to contribute to the national target of 25 per cent recycling by the end of this year.

In order to maintain this rate we need to keep up the momentum, so keep up the good work and remember to reduce, reuse and recycle your household waste.