Contaminated waste stream baffles efforts to boost Scottish recycling

Scotland’s efforts to reduce the amount of waste going to landfill is being foiled by contamination in the recycling stream.

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency’s first report looking at the quality of waste entering and leaving material recovery facilities (MRF) was published on 27 July. It found that of the 327,760 tonnes of recycled waste processed, the contamination rate ranged from 0.91% to 42.04% with a national average of 17%. However, this doesn’t include waste that was so badly contaminated that it never made it to recycling.