Cosla (the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities) says fortnightly waste collections would force residents to recycle more — but Dundee’s recycling record would appear to contradict that argument.

Councillor Julie Sturrock, environmental services and sustainability convener, said the number of tenements made it difficult for the city to transfer to fortnightly collections.

“I think the difference between Dundee and many other parts of Scotland is the density we have,” she said.

“When you’re dealing with a country area you don’t know how much people just pop on their fire, which isn’t great.

“In a place like Dundee, bins are often shared by 12 properties, so we have to be extremely careful about any thoughts of fortnightly collections. In these dense circumstances, the management would have to be done very carefully.

“We already have problems with a weekly collection. Some times people can be quite anti-social with presentation of their waste.

“We haven’t really cracked recycling in tenement areas. We are still working on pilot projects to get more people in tenements recycling. Once we have achieved that we can review the situation.”

A recycling project in Dundee that initially supplied 6000 houses with kerbside collection boxes for dry recyclables, including glass and plastics, has now been rolled out to a further 10,000 homes.

The scheme was funded by £26 million awarded to the council from the Executive’s strategic waste fund.

The council has taken on 12 staff to implement recycling schemes funded by Executive money.

The latest quarterly results show Dundee recycled or composted 31.2% of its rubbish in January to March, compared with a national average of 22.2%. It easily beat the other three big cities, all of which were below average.

The figures show Dundee produced more than 21,000 tonnes of waste during the quarter. More than half of that was burned at the DERL incinerator, but a new use was found for 6600 tonnes, with only 3500 tonnes having to be landfilled.

Last month the Executive gave the council £1.3 million to expand its collection of rubbish for recycling by providing more than 7000 on-street containers for tenements dwellers.