The rise of foodbanks across Scotland has been one of the most widely-publicised phenomena of recent years.
Many people across the north and north-east of the country are struggling to make ends meet and put food on the table for themselves and their families.
The situation has caused some charities to ask supermarkets and the public to be more careful with how they use food and avoid wasting it.
Yet shocking new figures have revealed that thousands of tonnes of unopened food packaging is being sent to landfill.
The vast level of wastage has been revealed after Aberdeenshire Council carried out a series of analyses following the introduction of new waste and recycling collection arrangements to 117,000 local households in the last few years.
Councils throughout the north are continuously attempting to limit the amount of rubbish going to landfill, which costs them millions of pounds in tax.
A Highland Council spokeswoman said: “Highland Council supports Zero Waste Scotland regularly on campaigns to encourage people to recycle more, such as annual recycle week.”
But the authority added that significant amounts of recyclable material continue to be sent to landfill in Aberdeenshire.
More than 20% of waste collected from households across the area is food which could go to alternative use, but instead it is left to rot in a hole in the ground.
Every household in Aberdeenshire has access to a weekly food waste recycling service, which sees unwanted food turned into compost for farmers’ fields in the area.
In addition to all the nutrients which are lost, sending it to landfill is expensive and the material then generates gas which can be harmful to the environment.
An analysis of household waste across Aberdeenshire has also exposed some eye-opening figures relating to other recyclable materials from which further use or value could be extracted.
More than half of the 83,412 tonnes of waste sent to landfill last year at a cost of around £10million could have been recycled, saving millions of pounds and benefiting the environment.
Recycling costs around half of landfill disposal, a practice which will be banned in Scotland from 2021, meaning other solutions will have to be found urgently, in addition to increased recycling and reuse.
Of the waste collected from homes across the region, 62.6% could be recycled using services available to residents, but unfortunately at the moment it still ends up in landfill.
Some common items can take hundreds, thousands or even millions of years to decompose, such as in the case of glass bottles.
Tin cans can last 50 years, plastic bottles 450 years, children’s nappies 800 years and carrier bags 1,000 years. Other common items take many lifetimes to deteriorate.
The independent study by Aberdeenshire Council sampled 1,200 homes, designed to be representative of Aberdeenshire as a whole.
Waste was transported to a transfer station where it was sorted into categories for analysis.
This has provided the authority with information on the types of waste being generated and how residents are disposing of them, with the future aim of encouraging householders to reduce waste and improve recycling rates.
The area has a co-mingled kerbside recycling system which accepts a large number of materials, including food waste collections every week.
Residents can recycle a significant proportion of waste by using their blue-lidded kerbside bin, with anything else being accepted at Recycling Centres (HWRCs) or mini recycling points.
Chairman of the council’s Infrastructure Services Committee, Peter Argyle, said: “Food waste accounted for the largest proportion of the residual waste, a truly incredible amount, in terms of the cost to produce it, purchase it and the sheer volume of material.
“As a result of this analysis, one of the recommendations is that the council should continue to focus on food waste reduction and capture, because of the large quantities and significant environmental impact of this waste.
“This is not about snooping on what people are throwing away with a view to imposing penalties – it’s an information-gathering exercise to help us provide fit-for-purpose services which help us all achieve the required waste reduction.”
On average, householders present just under 22lbs of waste to be disposed of in landfill every week.
The main item still left in landfill bins is food waste at 21.8% – of that figure, 9.1% could have been avoided by freezing it before it went out of date, or making something else out of it, while 9.5% was still packaged.
In addition, 4.4% was textiles and footwear, which could be re-used or recycled, while recyclable plastic bottles accounted for 1.2%. Paper and card, easily recycled, accounted for 5.1%.
Of everything found in landfill bins, 33.9% could have been recycled at the kerbside, while a further 28.7% could be taken to any of the council’s HWRCs. This includes garden waste, which accounted for 17.8%.
Glass is accepted at HWRCs and recycling points across the region and the council can supply smaller local facilities for public use. Glass accounted for 4.4% of the kerbside recyclables going into the ground.
Aberdeenshire Council’s head of roads, landscape services and waste management, Philip McKay, said: “Clearly, there is work for us to do to reach the recycling target of 60% by 2020, and ideally we’d like to recycle more beyond that.
“We will strive in the weeks, months and years ahead to help residents make the best use of our services, which can ultimately bring significant financial and environmental benefits for the area.”
A spokesman for Moray Council added: “Although Moray is one of the best authorities in Scotland at recycling (63%), food waste remains a challenge.
“We’ll shortly be undertaking a campaign to improve food waste recycling.”
At Argyll and Bute Council, a spokesman responded: “Between 2014 and 2016, recycling rates in Argyll and Bute increased from 29.9% to 33.9%, which is an overall increase of 10%, and we expect to see a further increase this year.
“We are totally committed to recycling and by taking advantage of recycling options people can save space in their green bin which saves money for council services.
“By throwing away less food people could save hundreds of pounds each year. The more we can work together to recycle the more money we can save and protect the services people have told us are important to them like investing in regeneration projects, educating our young people, improving our road network and supporting vulnerable people.
“We would encourage people to recycle as much waste as possible, because for every tonne of waste that goes to landfill, we pay over £80 in tax.”
In Shetland, kerbside recycling could be introduced if councillors give the green light to proposals for a radical overhaul of how the authority deals with household waste.
Having abandoned a previous, more limited form of recycling collection more than four years ago, Shetland lags far behind the rest of Scotland in recycling less than a tenth of its rubbish.
But the Scottish Government’s drive to bolster environmental regulations and reduce carbon emissions is gathering pace, and funding from Zero Waste Scotland (ZWS) has enabled the council to put together a plan that would see it collect paper, card, plastic, cans and cartons from householders for recycling.
The details are set out in a report due to be debated by the SIC’s environment and transport committee on Monday, which suggests a new recycling collection timetable should be established from July next year.
The council, which signed up to the Scottish Government’s household recycling charter in October 2016, has been working closely with ZWS to devise the system in recent months.
ZWS has offered transitional funding of £579,000 to the SIC, which would cover the £500,000 cost of providing new waste receptacles for households as well as £63,500 for a contractor to provide “communications project management support” to help get the message out. The report recommends taking advantage of the ZWS funding offer because the council will have to act sooner or later, and otherwise risks “even greater recycling transition costs being borne by the SIC in the coming years”.
In addition capital funding of around £750,000 would be needed for a new shed and sorting equipment to enable the council to sort and store recycling materials prior to shipping.
Shetland’s recycling rate has plummeted to a Scotland-wide low of just 9% against a national average of 44% since kerbside collection in Lerwick and Scalloway ceased in April 2013.
An existing derogation allowing Shetland’s household waste to be incinerated at the Greenhead-based energy recovery plant will not be extended, while the government is targeting a recycling rate of 70% by the middle of the next decade.
Under the new proposals, contained in a report from SIC waste management team leader Colin Bragg, it is forecast that the cost of weekly collection from over 11,000 households would not rise.
There is a proposed four-week cycle whereby non-recyclable waste would be collected one week, paper and card in the second week, non-recyclable waste in the third week and then plastic, cans and cartons in the fourth week.
If it wins councillors’ backing, the plan would initially begin on one route in early 2018 to enable officials to gauge how the system works ahead of full implementation next summer.
But it is a long haul. And some will wonder why so much food, in particular, is being squandered in the current economic climate.