English councils cut landfill rates by one million tonnes

As it reviews its long-term waste strategy, the Department revealed on Friday that the proportion of municipal waste going to landfill dropped from 72% to 67% in 2004/05.

The drop in landfill has come largely thanks to a 1.3 million tonne increase in the amount of household waste being recycled.

However, the amount of municipal waste generated in England in 2004/05 grew by 2.1% on the previous year, compared to a 1% drop in municipal waste arisings in 2003/04 (see letsrecycle.com story).

Local environmental quality minister Ben Bradshaw said the new figures were a sign that things “are continuing to move in the right direction”.

Mr Bradshaw said: “Diverting increasing amounts of waste from landfill through recycling is in no doubt thanks in part to better quality council services, including greatly expanded and more efficient kerbside recycling collection schemes.”

The minister also paid tribute to community re-use schemes in helping to cut landfill rates.

WasteDataFlow
The new figures were in part drawn from the new online system for local authority waste data, WasteDataFlow, although Defra conceded it was able to use information from just 50% of councils. Estimates drawn from Best Value Performance Indicator information were used to represent the full picture for the whole of England.

For municipal waste, the new figures reveal that some form of value – either energy or materials – was recovered from 33% of municipal waste in 2004/05, up from 28% in 2003/04.

Incineration rates remained “roughly constant” at 9%, Defra said.

Within the 29.7 million tonnes of municipal waste generated in 2004/05, 25.5 million tonnes (86%) came directly from households. Defra calculated that on average every person in England generates 513kg – about half a tonne – of waste each year.

Households
Defra confirmed the household waste recycling rate for 2004/05 was 22.5%, up from 17.8% the previous year, commenting that recycling rates are continuing to grow faster each year. The 4.7 percentage point growth in recycling rates in 2004/05 came after a 3.3 percentage point growth the year before, the Department said.

England is currently pushing for a 25% target for household waste recycling in 2005/06.

In terms of weight, Defra said 5.8 million tonnes of household waste had been recycled in 2004/05 – up 27.6% from the 4.5 million tonnes recycled in 2003/04.

Defra noted that there continues to be “significant variations” in household recycling rates across the English regions, with the highest recycling rates achieved in the East of England (averaging 29.4%), with the South West, East Midlands and South East also doing well (averaging 26 to 27%).

The new figures showed the North East region as having the lowest recycling rates, averaging 15.3%.