South Ayrshire Council has seen a fall in the number of missed bins as a result of technology introduced into its bin lorries.
Councillors heard that a new booking system for household waste recycling centres had tackled an issue of residents from North and East Ayrshire travelling to South Ayrshire to dump their rubbish.
Fiona Ross, service coordinator, grounds maintenance and bereavement, told a meeting of the Service and Partnerships Performance Panel that the new In-Cab system introduced to the refuse service in December had resulted in fewer missed bins and quicker processes for the likes of assisted collections.
She added that the system, which has done away with the old paper and pen approach and introduced a real-time digital system, has given crews real time information relating to routes and allows them to report issues and receive support from backroom staff.
Ms Ross was providing a progress report on the council’s Waste Strategy 2021-31.
She said: “There is good progress being made in completing the actions.
“We have also implemented a booking systems for HWRCs. This initiative seen a drop in recyclate.
“Our neighbours in North and East Ayrshire have seen an increase – demonstrating that a number of people who lived outwith South Ayrshire were coming to our recycling centres rather than using their own authority’s centres.”
She added that there had been a concern that the introduction of the booking system would result in an increase in fly-tipping.
Instead, in 2022 there was a 22 per cent drop in fly-tipping.
She also updated the panel on progress at the Heathfield Waste Transfer Station, which was purchased by the council from previous owners Barr in March.
The purchase is key to the strategy aims of developing infrastructure for residual waste and recyclable material sorting.
She said that a deep clean of the site had been completed and staff were working on a range of repairs and improvements.
The strategy also included a review of street cleaning, beginning with Ayr, which had already resulted in improvements, she said.
Councillor Chris Cullen asked whether there would be a roll out of the town centre street cleaning to residential areas.
The Ayr East councillor asked whether it was possible to measure the effectiveness of street sweepers, adding: “You can sometimes tell the street sweeper has been out as it has left a trail of disaster behind it.”
Ms Ross said that the service had to ensure that drivers emptied their sweepers as the trail left was down to them being full.
She continued: “We do go out into residential areas and do street sweeping. One of the challenges is parked cars and narrow areas and it can be very challenging.
“There are areas where we have people coming into commute. We try to get around these areas earlier or later in the day to avoid parked cars, but we are not always successful.”
Kenny Dalrymple, assistant director at the council, added that changes meant that cleansing staff had been allocated specific areas and that this ‘ownership’ had began to make a difference in a number of communities.
The report was approved by the panel.
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