The county announced on Friday that its residents had achieved a 51% recycling rate during the summer months from April 2006 to June 2006.
 Cambridgeshire county and Cambridge city council staff campaigning at a roadshow with staff from local commercial radio station Star 107 and master composter volunteers |
Of the 108,477 tonnes of household waste produced in Cambridgeshire from April to June, 55,258 tonnes was recycled.
Cambridgeshire has seen recycling figures climb year on year from 31% in 2003, to 37.8% in 2004 and 43.5% in 2005. The success has come through kerbside recycling facilities and household waste recycling centres, some of which have new facilities for collecting plastic bottles and plasterboard.
Prevention
The county council and its partners have also launched this year a waste prevention campaign to reduce the amount of waste produced in the first place. This includes encouraging people to buy loose goods and reusable items.
The county and its district and city councils were awarded Beacon status earlier this year for their excellence in waste management (see letsrecycle.com story).
Recycling has really got to the hearts and minds of people in some parts of the county, such as Huntingdonshire, where recycling rates have soared as high 55%.
Cllr John Reynolds, Cambridgeshire's cabinet member for environment and community services, thanked county residents for their efforts and said the county was now leading the way for recycling in the UK.
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He said: “We and our partners are continually looking for innovative ways to improve recycling and we share the Government’s concerns that more needs to be done nationally to reduce the amount of waste being needlessly dumped in landfill.”
Cllr Reynolds added that despite the decreasing landfill rate, Cambridgeshire was still spending 7.3 million every year to send waste to landfill, including 771,000 in Landfill Tax. He said: “This is why recycling is so important.”
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