A garden waste collection scheme could potentially be a money-spinner for Dumfries and Galloway Council.
Councillors agreed on Tuesday to move forward with plans to introduce a garden waste bin collection service – if a bid to the Scottish Government for full £2.33m funding is approved.
This means that householders would be charged £40 annually if they opted-in to the garden waste scheme, with bins being emptied fortnightly between March and November.
Council bosses are expecting to hear the outcome of the funding application to Holyrood in the coming weeks.
However, at the communities committee on Tuesday, the issue of composting the collected waste was discussed, along with the idea of the council earning some money through processing all the garden
waste.
The council doesn’t have the facilities to do this at the moment, but Mid Galloway and Wigtown West Councillor David Inglis asked: “I’m wondering whether composting is something that we can look at as part of this development.
“And what would it cost to set up a system of composting within the region – and reselling it rather than sending it outwith the region or to some outside body to recycle and get some capital generation from that?
“I know it’s not something that’s going to happen in the short term, but surely that’s the second part of this development?
“If we’re going to collect it, can we compost it? Can we resell it within the region?”
Nith Councillor David Slater said: “If it was recycled, and say it was highly successful, would it be possible we could actually bring in garden waste from other areas and make some money out of that?”
Abbey Councillor Ian Blake, chairman of the communities committee, said: “The position just now is that we don’t have our own facilities to do the composting, and it would go out to tender locally if possible – or further afield.”
Karen Brownlie, the council’s interim head of facilities, waste and neighbourhood services, said: “If the funding is agreed, which we will know in June/early July, then what we would anticipate is bringing a future report back to the service committee after recess.
“As part of that action plan going forward, we could add in investigation in relation to composting, the future of that, and what that would look like to start putting some financial data around it.
“We would also look at the complexities of doing that and seeing if that is a realistic option for the council going forward.”
