However, Defra – which audits the figures before publishing official municipal and household recycling rates – has claimed the system is “better than it has ever been before” and insisted that the Manchester case was an “isolated incident”.
The WasteDataFlow web-based system was introduced by Defra in April 2004 as a means of increasing the frequency and efficiency of waste data collected from local authorities in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The system replaced Defra's annual Municipal Waste Management Survey.
After initial teething problems at the pilot stage (see letsrecycle.com story), the system has come to form the basis of official recycling figures in the UK under the management of environmental consultancy Enviros.
However, criticism has been voiced by a number of local authority experts to letsrecycle.com following Manchester city council's announcement in October 2009 that it had to reduce its recycling rate by 5.4% after incorrectly including material used as daily landfill cover in its household recycling rate (see letsrecycle.com).
The reduction by Manchester will impact at a small level on national recycling figures and if other authorities have or are acting in a similar way, the national recycling figure could be marginally down. There has been some expectation that other urban authorities in Northern areas may also have been in a similar position to Manchester although no councils have come forward and said this is the case.
Error
In an attempt to assess whether other councils could be making a similar error to Manchester, and potentially distorting the national recycling rate, letsrecycle.com unearthed further fears that inaccurately reported figures were going unnoticed.
One council commentator, who wished to remain anonymous, said the figures were only subject to scrutiny if they showed sharp fluctuations. And, he claimed misreported but consistent figures would not be detected by WasteDataFlow.
He said: “If there are flaws in the way that data is being reported and audited [then] this means there is some level of over-reporting in the real recycling rates by councils.”
Although it was acknowledged that some councils would inevitably submit slightly inaccurate data to the database, all local authorities agreed that it was important to have confidence in the final data.
Steve Burdis, chair of the National Association of Waste Disposal Officers, told letsrecycle.com: “Clearly what we are committed to is having high quality and accurate data and that doesn't mean we won't have inaccuracies and differences which will need to be corrected.
“Local authorities and governments need to have confidence in the data that is collected and accuracy of the system going forward.”
Questionable
Another industry expert, who wished to remain anonymous, claimed that that there was a wide array of questionable practices taking place in regard to recycling rate reporting and that these could permeate the WasteDataFlow system.
Giving examples from local authorities, he claimed that some councils were counting all material collected at the kerbside as reported, regardless of whether it was actually contaminated or eventually rejected by materials recycling facilities (MRFs).
“An awful lot of authorities claim that all is collected is recycled and they are counting material that is thrown out by the collection crew or MRFs,” he said. “In most cases, local authorities report what they have collected as what they have recycled.”
And, he said that “a lot of councils” currently collect recyclable material from schools in the local authority area and then include this in their household recycling rate. However, he claimed that when it came to the school's residual waste, this would be dealt with by a commercial waste contractor and not added to residual waste arising figures.
He added that there was little incentive for any council to follow Manchester's lead and explain any discrepancies as they would be subjected to a great level of criticism and scrutiny.
“The over-arching principal is the local authority that comes clean and says exactly what they are doing finds themselves in-mired in a system of checks and balances,” he said.
Appropriate scrutiny
Responding to these criticisms and defending the WasteDataFlow system, a Defra spokeswoman told letsrecycle.com: “From our perspective the system for reporting data is indeed adequate, and there is appropriate scrutiny. Data entered by local authorities is first scrutinised by [project manager] Enviros.
“It is then further scrutinised by the Environment Agency who also conduct a risk based programme of audit visits to local authorities,” she added.
Defra also rebuffed the notion that other councils could be misreporting figures, as Manchester had been, and that there could be a wider issue for the national recycling rate. However, there remains a view within the municipal sector that there could be other urban authorities who have or are making reports in error regarding cover material for landfill.
The Defra spokeswoman emphasised: “The advent of WasteDataFlow has meant the quantity and robustness of the data we have is better than it has ever been before. No system is perfect, but the incident with Manchester city council was one, isolated incident.”
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