Aberdeen City Council has defended a waste disposal trial which saw 1.5t of recyclable materials dumped at a landfill site.

The trial, which aimed to discover whether mixing collections of paper, glass, tin and plastic would make recycling more efficient, saw 4.2t of recyclable materials collected from about 400 homes.

About 2.7t of paper was separated from the collection and recycled, but the rest was sent to landfill as a company could not be found to divide up the remaining materials.

A council spokeswoman said: ‘It is not our policy to send items collected for recycling to landfill. This was strictly a one-off. It was part of an ongoing process identifying the best practice for collecting materials.’

The trial found mixing recyclable materials a ‘much quicker’ method of collection and the council aims to replace kerbside boxes and bags with a new wheeled bin for all recyclables at a cost of £1.3M.

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