The Environment Agency has been brought in by Defra to help settle a dispute over who is the top-performing council for recycling in England. And, following scrutiny of the figures, the department has said it is standing by its original figures.
Last Thursday (November 3), the department published data showing that Rochford was the top-performing council for recycling in 2010/11 – with a recycling rate of 66%.
But, this was contested by South Oxfordshire district council which claimed it had achieved a 70% recycling rate during the period (see letsrecycle.com story). In the official figuresthe councilwas shown to have achieved just a 65% recycling rate.
The confusion prompted a series of high high-level discussions on Friday (November 4) between the council, Defras statistician David Lee and Stephen Glenville from the Environment Agency. As a member of the Agencys Landfill Allowance Trading Scheme team, Mr Glenville was brought in because of his expertise in interpreting figures from the governments WasteDataFlow database which local authorities use to upload their recycling figures.
Speaking to letsrecycle.com today (November 7), a Defra spokesman re-affirmed that the figures were correct.
He said: We still stand by our figures that went out last week. We are confident they are correct.
Debate
The debate over the figures centres around MRF reject rates. Dry recyclables from South Oxfordshire are sent for initial sorting at its contractor Biffas materials recycling facilities at Aldridge and Edmonton, where the reject rates have been reduced. The council also claims to have found new outlets for lower-grade waste paper, which it claims have pushed up its performance (see letsrecycle.com story).
Matt Prosser, strategic director at South Oxfordshire and Vale of White Horse district councils, said: Defra and the Environment Agency are being very helpful and we are continuing to have dialogue with them over the data. We continue to maintain that we have surpassed the 70% recycling rate.
The Defra results are likely to come as something of an embarrassment to the councils collection contractor Biffa Municipal, which has heavily publicised the 70% recycling rate- which it claimed was thetop in the country.
In August, Biffa municipal development director Pete Dickson said that South Oxfordshires performance set the gold standard for local authority recycling, adding that this outstanding result reflects how council, contactor and residents worked together to add over 50% to the councils recycling and composting rate within 18 months of a new service launch.
‘Error’
In a statement issued today, Biffa municipal said that an investigation by the council and Biffa had found that “out-of-date” data had been submitted to WasteDataFlow which had effectively reduced South Oxfordshire’s recycling rateby around 5%.
It said: “A combination of efficiency improvements at Biffas MRFs and a further secondary processor producing a higher recycling yield have both impacted positively by reducing the amount of waste finally processed as refuse-derived fuel (RDF) or landfilled.”
A council spokesman added: This data error was an innocent mistake, and South Oxfordshire gained no advantage from it. In fact, its recycling rate suffered as a result. Fresh scrutiny of our input data for 2010-11 is currently taking place, but we are confident that it will show a reuse, recycling and composting rate of around 70% for the year.
We will continue to work with Defra and the Environment Agency to ensure that our data is accurately reported. However, it will take us some time to finalise these discussions. We will publish the final reuse, recycling and composting rate once these discussions are complete and the final rate is confirmed.
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