MOUNTAINS of abandoned Christmas trees are contributing to an average of over 120 complaints a day about waste left uncollected in Scotland's capital city.
Between January and November last year, an astonishing 40,662 complaints were made to Edinburgh Council relating to non-collection of waste including household wheelie bins, recycling, food waste and on-street public bins.
There is little sign of the problem improving as piles of Christmas trees were left lying all over the streets of the capital, the day after the supposed collection date for them.
The figures, obtained through a Freedom of Information request, show that the city is in a worst state that ever before with complaints soaring from 31,996 for the whole of the previous year.
Complaints between January and November 2015 averaged 122 a day or one complaint every 12 minutes.
Almost all (95 per cent) were noted as being due to non-collection of waste.
Hundreds of angered residents have taken to the council's Twitter page to share shocking images of overflowing bins, some of which have not been collected since before Christmas.
One social media user wrote on the micro-blogging site: "Pay attention. I don't want to end up wrestling loose Christmas trees out of the street after dark in a gale again."
In another message, resident Dan Smith asked the council: "What will you be doing with all the Christmas trees liberally strewn around the city?"
Another citizen, Jenny Matthews, asked the council why they were not collecting recycling bins, claiming that five weeks of rubbish had built up in the city's Woodhall Road.
Meanwhile, Bill Tully claimed on Twitter that Portobello had not been collected since Dec 23. He said the situation was a "disgrace."
Giles Cooke wrote: "I logged missed bin collection three times - still nothing. Missed entire street today. Not had collection for a month."
Meanwhile, another resident tweeted an image of an overflowing bin in a lane off Thistle Street.
A spokesman for Taxpayers' Scotland said: "The City Council really does need to concentrate on basic services like this above all other fanciful ideas for tram systems or arts festivals.
"Local taxpayers deserve a lot better for their hard earned cash than a badly operating service that doesn't keep Edinburgh streets clean and its residents' waste collections dealt with efficiently."
Scottish Conservative local government spokesman Cameron Buchanan said: "Residents and visitors to our capital city deserve a far better service and it is not hard to see why people are complaining.
"With rubbish bags bulging out of bins and streets strewn with litter, it is hardly doing much for the image of the city both at home and abroad.
"Taxpayers fork out millions each year on council tax and the very least they deserve is an efficient waste collection service and clean streets. Collections should be made according to usage, especially in city centre streets.
"We are constantly bombarded with Scottish Government adverts on waste, but obviously these campaigns are not working.
"The city council and SNP Government should be putting every effort into clearing up our streets and not making Edinburgh a laughing stock as Europe's dumping ground."
Environment Convener, Councillor Lesley Hinds said: “Over the last three years we have been providing new recycling collections to make it easier for residents to recycle their household waste leading to an increase in the number of collections we carry out.
"With approximately 480,000 collections taking place each week in the city, these customer complaints translates to roughly 0.2% of collections. The new service has actually been a great success with high levels of participation and increased amount of waste being recycled and less and less going to landfill.
"Landfilling waste costs the Council £120 a ton so the fact that we are now recycling 43% of the city’s waste represents a saving of millions of pounds a year. We would really like to thank the residents of Edinburgh for their support and for helping to make our recycling service such a success.
"We will continue to look at ways to help residents to continue reduce and recycle their waste and also improve our collections service and minimise complaints.
“We are committed to providing an efficient recycling and waste service in Edinburgh. We have worked hard to communicate collection dates and we ensure our figures are carefully scrutinised by Transport and Environment Committee.
She added: "We have invested in new refuse collection vehicles and will continue to invest in new technology to ensure collections are planned and delivered as efficiently and as reliably as possible.
"With our “Save time, do it online” campaign we have been encouraging people who experience issues with bin collections to report them online so that these can be sorted out as quickly as possible.”
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