The national picture
Scotland generated 2.32 million tonnes of household waste in 2024 and recycled 44.3%. SEPA publishes each council's figures separately, updated annually — check the household waste data pages for the current position.
Edinburgh's number is worth reading with two structural facts in mind, because they do more to explain it than any amount of public campaigning.
- Scotland 2024: 2.32m tonnes
- National recycling rate 44.3%
- Measured by weight
- Communal hubs across much of the city
- Tips are booking-only
- Per-council data published by SEPA
Communal bins change everything
A large share of Edinburgh is served by communal bin hubs rather than individual household bins, and the two behave completely differently.
With your own bin, contamination is traceable. Put the wrong thing in and it is your bin that gets tagged. With a communal hub shared by a whole close or street, one wrong bag downgrades a load for everyone and nobody can tell whose it was. There is no feedback, so the behaviour does not correct.
Edinburgh's communal system also uses a different colour scheme from its kerbside one — green lids for mixed recycling, purple for glass, black for general — which we set out in Edinburgh bin colours. Two systems in one city is itself a source of error.
No booking slot, no van, top floor?
None of that is your problem with us. We come to you and do the carrying.
Booking-only tips push bulky waste elsewhere
Edinburgh's recycling centres run on bookings. Vans and trailers can only book half-hour slots at three fixed times a day, must bring photographic ID matching an Edinburgh address, and a long list of vehicle types is barred outright. The detail is in our Edinburgh recycling centres guide.
For a car with a boot of cardboard that is a mild inconvenience. For a top-floor flat with a mattress and no vehicle it is effectively a closed door.
That waste does not evaporate. It goes into the general stream, into a chargeable uplift, into a licensed collection — or it ends up beside a communal bin, which is the pattern described in fly-tipping in Edinburgh.
What a proper clearance does to the figure
Bulky waste is where a tonnage-based recycling rate is won or lost. A sofa, a mattress and a fridge together weigh more than a household's bins do in a month.
Presented as general waste, that is heavy low-value tonnage. Sorted at collection it becomes timber, metal, WEEE (anything with a plug or a battery) and textiles. We divert over 80% of what we collect, against a national household figure of 44.3%.
See rubbish removal in Edinburgh, flat and tenement clearance or student flat clearance.
