Council spending millions on a new fleet of bin lorries

Edinburgh City Council is about to spend £3.6 million on a new fleet of bin lorries.

A contract to provide the local authority with 17 refuse collection vehicles has been awarded after receiving just one tender.

The council said it was buying them to replace existing waste trucks which are nearing the end of their operational life.

It comes less than a year electric bin lorries were purchased from the same company for just over £2 million.

Dennis Eagle Limited will supply the city with 15 26-tonne trucks and an additional two smaller vehicles weighing 18 tonnes.

The Midlands-based firm was the only offer made in response to the tendering process and will be paid £3.6 million by the council – averaging at £211,000 per vehicle.

Rather than being added to the existing fleet, it is understood they will be rolled out on the roads to take the place of 17 soon-to-be-obsolete bin lorries.

Last November the council agreed to buy five electric refuse collection vehicles from Dennis Eagle for £2,177,525 in a bid to cut down on its reliance on fossil fuels.

A report revealed that nearly 700,000 litres of diesel was burned by the city’s 66 waste trucks in 2021-22, equating to over a quarter of the council’s total fleet emissions.

It also said Dennis Eagle had committed to “the delivery of appropriate localised Community Benefits”.

These included 500 free copies of ‘Dennis The Dustcart’, a children’s book with “an engaging approach to making homework fun” to “change the recycling behaviour of families through practical parental engagement with their children to understand why recycling is important”. 

In addition the council was offered two days provision of “a converted refuse collection vehicle classroom” to “develop roadshows on recycling, waste, engineering and other related topics that we can take to local schools”.

by Donald Turvill, Local Democracy Reporter.

The Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) is a public service news agency. It is funded by the BBC, provided by the local news sector (in Edinburgh that is Reach plc (the publisher behind Edinburgh Live and The Daily Record) and used by many qualifying partners. Local Democracy Reporters cover news about top-tier local authorities and other public service organisations.