Bin lorries set to turn veggie

Eco move gets green light

- KATHRYN ANDERSON

All Perth and Kinross bin lorries will soon run on Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil (HVO) - rather than diesel - reducing Perth and Kinross Council's (PKC) carbon emissions by an estimated 725 tonnes.

Councillors last week voted on the move as part of its five-year Fleet Decarbonisation Strategy.

However Conservative councillors slammed it as "virtue signalling" and voted for the £100,000, allocated for the fuel switchover, to instead be spent enhancing rural bus services.

On Wednesday, April 30 PKC’s Climate Change and Sustainability Committee was asked to consider the local authority's Fleet Decarbonisation Strategy.

Part of the strategy included rolling out the use of HVO to the council’s entire fleet of bin lorries following a trial at Friarton in Perth. Bin lorries based at depots in Blairgowrie, Crieff, Kinross, and Pitlochry will transition to using HVO fuel by June 2025. It was agreed HVO will be used to fuel all 80 of the council's heavy goods vehicles (HGVs) by the end of 2025.

Direct Services manager Nigel Taylor said: "We have 18 of our 26 bin trucks on HVO at the moment and this saves us around 500 tonnes of carbon per annum and by the end of this year our carbon saving will have increased to around 725 tonnes because we'll have all 26 of our vehicles on HVO."