GLASGOW’S Green Group are calling for a city waste summit to engage with residents and businesses to encourage them to recycle more.

It comes after the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) published the Scottish household recycling rates for 2018.

Glasgow has reported a 2 per cent year-on-year drop in recycling from 2017 to 2018. In 2018 Glasgow recycled 24.6 per cent of its household waste compared to 26.7 per cent in 2017.

Scotland as a whole is also down slightly with 44.7 per cent of household waste recycled in 2018 compared to 45.5 per cent in 2017.

Councillor Martha Wardrop, environment spokesperson for the Green councillor group, said: “It’s really disappointing that, in the face of the climate crisis, these figures show Glasgow’s recycling rate is going down not up. While the ‘Beast from the East’ will have had an impact in these latest figures, because the Council sent blue bin waste to landfill after snow delays, it’s also clear that we’ve a mountain to climb to get anywhere near the EU targets for 65 per cent recycling by 2030.”

Ms Wardrop explained what steps she believed needed to be taken to address the issue.

She went on: “That’s why Greens are calling for a city waste summit to focus on the practical solutions we need. That means taking a wholesale look at how our services are designed, how we engage with residents and business to help them reduce waste and recycle more, how we take action when services aren’t being used correctly, and how we support our staff better.

“A circular economy, where we reduce waste and reuse, repair and recycle as much as possible, means we can cut our carbon footprint and create jobs in green manufacturing. Glasgow is looking to be a global leader on this agenda and that is opening up really exciting possibilities, but it’s also vital that we get our own house in order.”

The council said they are taking a "range of measures to improve recycling rates".

A spokesman said: “There has also been overall drop in the national recycling rate but we fully accept that improving the city’s recycling performance has been challenging.

“The city’s housing stock, which is 70 per cent tenemental or flatted, is one of the issues that contributes to the difficulties the city has with recycling.

“We are also finding the companies that reprocess the recyclable materials are increasingly inclined to reject what is sent to them if it is contaminated with kinds of waste they don’t want.

“But we are taking a range of measures that are intended to improve our recycling performance.

“The recently opened Glasgow Recycling and Renewable Energy Centre will recover significant amounts of recyclable goods while also diverting up to 90 per cent of general waste away from landfill.

“The £6.5m bin replacement programme is currently taking 50,000 old steel bins out of commission and will double the bin capacity for recycling at homes all across the city.

“We are also beginning work on a new waste strategy for the city that will include a focus on how we deal with waste affects efforts to tackle the climate emergency.

“We will be engaging extensively with a range of stakeholders as we develop this new waste strategy.”