The north western authority achieved a carbon saving of 116 kilograms per person in 2013/14, finishing ahead of North Somerset council (104kg pp), which topped the table in 2011/12.
Cheshire West operates a kerbside sort service for household recyclables including paper, plastic, metal and glass, as well as weekly food waste collections.
Somerset, Leicestershire and Devon council made up the rest of the top five performing authorities. The bottom five performing councils comprised Tower Hamlets, Lewisham, Bradford, Newham and Leicester councils, which saved between 27-34 kg per person of CO2 each.
The report is the third annual waste disposal authority Recycling Carbon Index published by consultancy Eunomia, which is designed to give councils an alternative measure for assessing the performance of their waste services.
Eunomia uses recycling performance data from WasteDataFlow – and assesses this data against the carbon factors used to calculate Zero Waste Scotland’s Scottish Carbon Metric. This is compared against the overall population of the authority, and used to provide a saving per resident.
Trend
According to the consultancy, overall there has been a 4% increase for England and a 6% increase for Wales in the amount of carbon avoided. Northern Ireland has seen the best overall increase – totalling 7%.
It is estimated that the improvement in carbon performance, which sits alongside a modest improvement in overall recycling rate of 0.3% for the same period, can be attributed to a shift in the type of waste captured, with less paper and more plastic and metal entering the waste stream.
James Fulford, Director at Eunomia, said: “It’s really encouraging to see the improvement in performance between 2012/13 and 2013/14, particularly set against plateauing recycling rates in England. It highlights the importance of considering the full environmental impacts of recycling services. It’s vital that we have efficient collection services that effectively maximise environmental performance. The report and online tool will help waste managers to identify good practice and understand where to focus efforts to improve the environmental performance of their services.”
The online interactive tool and report can be accessed via http://www.eunomia.co.uk/carbonindex.
-Amended 5/5/2015 to update bottom five performing councils.
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