Carpets to be rolled out for recycling

The city council said it was considering measures, including recycling or reusing old carpets and reusing items left by tenants in empty council houses.

It comes after homeowners were told to expect recycling bins for food waste as the city battles to reduce its spiralling landfill tax bill.

The latest initiative, which is still at the planning stage, comes as new figures show huge disparities in recycling levels in different parts of the Capital.

Statistics provided by the council showed the overall participation rate of properties in areas such as Craiglockhart was as high as 76 per cent, while it was as low as 21 per cent in Wardieburn and Granton.

City environment leader Councillor Robert Aldridge said: "It is important as a city that we lower the amount of rubbish sent to landfill and recently we have introduced some great schemes, including battery and plastic bottle recycling and we will be piloting food waste recycling in the spring.

"We also have a great service for recycling furniture, where residents can take items to our reuse cabins within our four community recycling centres.

"The introduction of these new services will make it easier for residents to recycle even more materials."

He added: "We are keen to look at other materials which can be reused and recycled and explore ideas for the future to build on our recent successes.

"Everyone has a responsibility to reduce waste and protect natural resources and I would urge the public to get behind our waste minimisation and recycling initiatives and reduce, reuse and recycle where they can."

The council is planning to introduce the food recycling pilot in April by handing out sealed lockable boxes and special biodegradable bin liners to an initial 20,000 properties.

Should the scheme prove a success, it will then be extended to all 235,000 homes across the Capital by late 2013.

The move is a bid by the council to cut its landfill tax bill, which is set to rise to 12 million a year by 2014, and comes after the Scottish Government introduced tough new targets that will see a ban on binning biodegradable waste by 2017.

The council estimates around 750 tonnes of food waste will be recycled in the first year of the scheme, rising to 20,000 tonnes annually by 2014/15.

Commenting on plans to recycle carpets and furniture, director of Zero Waste Scotland Iain Gulland said: "This is another welcome step by Edinburgh in making progress towards Scotland's zero waste targets.

"Good-quality furniture and household goods should never end up in landfill."Environmentally, reusing unwanted items is the best possible thing to do and it is good to see councils increasingly looking at reuse as well as recycling - especially as this often benefits local communities too."