Who'll take the rap for this classic cock-up?

Nine months in and it seems Scotland's first and only municipal DECYCLING scheme is working a treat with a record fall in the amount of household waste being composted or recycled and spiralling tonnages of refuse going straight to landfill.

While virtually every other local authority in mainland Scotland is participating in a Government led drive to hit ambitious recycling targets and an eventual aim for zero waste, Scottish Borders Council's latest set of statistics on the garbage front can only be described - perhaps appropriately - as rubbish.

Our sharp-eyed chief reporter Doug Collie warned earlier this year there would be grim repercussions after the councillors who hold the reins and crack the whips at SBC took the puzzling and daft decision to suspend collections of garden waste and render tens of thousands of green wheelie bins redundant.

However Collie was not alone in condemning the move which lacked credibility during the 'green' age we live in. There was bound to be fall-out as gardeners grappled with the issue of disposal of grass cuttings, rotting apples from Borders orchards, and the vast collection of dead bedding plants at the end of another growing season.

But we haven't even had to wait that long for the proverbial manure to hit the fan! SBC has been kind enough to publish the evidence of its own tumbling recycling rates which we now see were on the slide by the end of the first quarter of 2014/15, a couple of months after garden waste collecting was binned.

Few councils can have achieved a ten per cent fall in their own recycling levels within the space of a year by taking direct action to halt composting of garden waste. But that's exactly what has taken place in the Borders with recycling now down to an embarrassing 34.52 per cent against 44.44 per cent in the first quarter of 2013/14. It should be borne in mind that all Scottish councils were supposed to be striving for a 50 per cent figure by 2013 and 60 per cent in the year 2020.

The same locally elected members who decided on this unique waste disposal strategy will, in all probability, not give a hoot when they're told the amount of household rubbish going to landfill has increased by a distinctly unimpressive 12 per cent in the two comparable quarters...up from 7,281 to 8,152 tonnes.

In quarter one of 2013/14 the cost of sending Borders waste to landfill was £524,205. In the corresponding quarter of 2014/15 the cost was £652,160, that’s an increase of £137,955 or a massive 26.32%. And remember this is the increase in costs for just one quarter. Multiply the £137,955 by four and you get the possible annual increase in landfill costs - £551,820. How does that sit alongside the alleged “savings” from scrapping the green bin collection?

So there you have it. Another potential half-million pound legacy for council taxpayers thanks to the sheer incompetence of those running local services.

But if you're waiting for someone to put up a hand and plead guilty to a bout of stupidity or admit responsibility for sending our recycling rates to the bottom of the Scottish league table, then please don't hold your breath.

There's no doubt that heads should roll after this latest classic cock-up in the annals of Borders local government. But with so many previous examples of councillors getting it wrong I don't suppose yet another costly error at taxpayers' expense will result in drastic action to ensure the perpetrators are held to account. Why change a flawed system that's aye been?