Two Ayrshire projects are to benefit from a share of £8.4m from the Scottish Government to help reduce emissions and household waste.

Enterprise groups HydroKlear and Marine Biopolymers reuse whisky by-products, waste plastic and household furniture and will benefit from this funding.

This follows more than £4m being made available to councils that signed up to the Scottish Household Recycling Charter.

Announcing the funding at the Scottish Resources Conference, environment secretary Roseanna Cunningham said: "While we have made steady progress on recycling with the amount of household waste recycled in 2016 reaching 45.2% we want to see the pace of these improvements increase.

"Our investment will make it easier for households and businesses to put their things in the right bin by removing some of the confusion of different systems and working towards a national recycling system.

"As our need to tackle climate change becomes ever more urgent it is crucial that we invest in keeping materials in circulation for as long as possible."