Our customer, the Scottish Borders council secured the biggest increase in recycling rates of any area of Scotland in 2019, according to the latest SEPA statistics. The figures show recycling in the Borders jumped from 38.8% in 2018 to 49.2% in 2019. The significant improvement means the Scottish Borders are also well above the national average of 44.9%.
The dramatic rise in recycling has been attributed to the Scottish Borders becoming a landfill-free area in July 2019 after the procurement of a new residual waste contract. Levenseat Limited was awarded the contract, which involves the transport and treatment of the 42k tonnes of residual waste produced in the Borders each year.
Ross Sharp Dent from Scottish borders waste services commented, “this is great news and could not have been achieved without your hard work and effort over the last year. I do genuinely feel like we are building a strong relationship. Hopefully we can take this good news and build on it.”
Local councillors from Scottish Borders were also impressed, and Councillor Shona Haslam commented,
“We must thank the Borders public for their continued recycling efforts which, alongside the removal of our landfill site and new residual waste contract, has helped us achieve the biggest improvement in Scotland.
Councillor Sandy Aitchison, Executive Member for Sustainable Development added,
“By closing our landfill site and instead having our residual waste either recycled or turned into a fuel to generate heat and electricity, we have been able to reduce the levels of harmful greenhouse gases released into our local environment.”
We are really pleased to have helped them with this achievement. Chris Leader, Commercial Contracts Manager, commented,
“Levenseat would like to extend our congratulations to Scottish Borders on securing the biggest increase in recycling rates of any council area in Scotland. We are delighted to have played a part in the success story and look forward to continuing to work together on what has been a very successful partnership. The communities of Scottish Borders must be delighted, clearly they are working hard to increase recycling at home, and they should be extremely proud of this achievement.”
Our facility is unique to Scotland, it has a front-end recover facility to ensure recyclates are captured and the remaining waste is used to produce a fuel, contributing to Scotland’s renewable energy targets. The combination of recovery facility and power generation facility means we can ensure there is maximum diversion from landfill and vital resources can be recovered and recycled.
For the full story please visit the Scottish Borders website