England “beginning to turn corner” on waste generation

According to figures released this month, 25.4 million tonnes of household waste was created last year, with 2004/05 figures showing that 25.6 million tonnes was produced the year before.

It was also confirmed in the figures that a recycling rate of 26.7% had been achieved and London is now the country's worst recycling region.

And England's reliance of landfill has fallen for the fourth straight year, partly down to the drop in waste production.

Waste minimisation

The government has maintained that waste reduction tops the hierarchy, before reusing or recycling. And it seems that this may have begun to hit home, with just over a million tonnes less waste being produced in 2005/06.

This was coupled with drops in municipal waste produced by all of the regions.

Recycling

All of the individual regions also saw increases in their recycling rates, all now have rates of over 20%. For the third consecutive year the East is the leading area, with a rate of 34.1%.

The East Midlands (31.8) and South West (31.4) are all now over the 30% recycling mark, with the South East (29.2) very close to joining them.

At the other end, the North East's (21.1) run as the worst recycling area is over, with London (20/7%) now “holding back” the rest of the country.

It represents a remarkable rise for the North East of England, which was recycling just 6.6% of its waste and was the last to break double figures just three years ago.

Overall household waste recycling in England is now 26.7%, up almost ten percentage points from two years ago when England recorded a recycling rate of 17.8%. This figure also puts the country above the European average.

Going deeper than the regional recycling and landfill rates, all of the 121 local authorities met their first year LATS targets for the amount of biodegradable waste sent to landfill.

Commenting on the Tricia Henton, director of environment protection at the environment agency, said: “Today’s report shows that all the 121 local authorities in England landfilled within limits. In fact, England beat its national allowance allocation for 2005/6 by 18%. We are delighted with this outcome which has only been possible through a lot of hard work by Local Authority staff.”

Recovery

One figure released by Defra which really shows the progress England is making is the fact that last year 135 kilogram's per head of waste was recycled – from a total of 505 kg per head. In 1983/84 just three kg per head was sent for reuse or reprocessing, from 397 kg produced.

The use of recovery methods such as MBT and EfW has reached the 10 million tonnes per annum mark. This means the UK has an overall recovery rate of 37.2% for 2005/06. With a spate of incineration facilities due in the coming year's reliance on landfill could be below 50% by 2010.

England still sent 17.8 million tonnes of municipal waste to landfill last year, a figure that has been dropping since a peak in 2001/02 at 22.4 million. This figure still represents a 62% landfill rate, down a full ten percentage points in two years.

Thanks to a heavy reliance on incineration the West Midlands was the only region to landfill less than 50% of its waste for the second year running. The area sent 44% waste to landfill, but 31% was burned.

All other regions had landfill rates between 59% (South East) and 70% (North West).