The Orkney & Shetland waste area covers the two local authority areas of Orkney Islands Council and Shetland Islands Council.

The AWP sets out the best practicable environmental option (BPEO) for the management of the area’s MSW. This calls for:

• Preventing waste generation at source
• Kerbside recycling collections for the major towns
• More bring facilities in remote areas
• Promoting home composting
• Recovering energy from most of the area’s MSW
• Reducing the amount of MSW exported from Orkney to Shetland
• Developing a new materials recovery facility (MRF) at a planned new landfill site on Shetland.

Large amounts of MSW are already sent to an energy-from-waste (EfW) plant on Shetland. The AWP aims to maintain EfW at 70%, but to increase recycling to 18% by 2020 and reduce landfilling to 14%. New collection arrangements for household waste and more recycling points are being introduced to promote recycling. The community sector will continue to play a major role in recycling and composting MSW in both Orkney and Shetland.

Funding awards to the local authorities from the Scottish Executive will help to develop the infrastructure necessary to meet the AWP’s targets. Local Waste Aware campaigns will seek to change attitudes to waste.