Councils attack “seriously misleading” Telegraph article

In a letter sent to the newspaper, Peterborough city council labelled the story, which first appeared on Saturday (December 20) (see letsrecycle.com story), “seriously misleading” for suggesting local councils were unnecessarily landfilling recyclables.

The council, which was the UK's top performing unitary authority in 2007/08 with a 46.6% recycling rate, claimed that, in compiling the story, the newspaper had asked it for figures relating to materials within collections that were either non-recyclable or “so contaminated that they cannot be recycled”.

As a result it said that “the figures therefore referred to rejected materials because they were contaminated waste or non-recyclable items in the first place,” and not to recyclables which had been properly sorted by residents.

Citing Peterborough city council's commitment to boost its recycling rate to 65% by 2020 and to reduce residents' contamination of their source-separated collections, the letter said: “Unfortunately, your misleading article risks damaging these efforts by causing unnecessary consternation to many residents who are conscientiously separating household materials for recycling.”

Oxfordshire

The Telegraph article claimed that more than 75% of the 209 councils which responded to its survey admitted to sending some of their recyclable waste to landfill and/or incinerators.

However, the Oxfordshire Waste Partnership, which is made up of six councils in the county, stressed that recyclables that had been properly sorted by residents in its area were not sent to landfill.

The Partnership's coordinator, Wayne Lewis, said: “What the Daily Telegraph failed to recognise was that no system of this type and scale will be 100% efficient. Inevitably some householders will have placed non-recyclable items out for collection.

“Even the most enthusiastic recyclers make the odd mistake, but working with our contractors we make sure these contaminants are removed to ensure re-manufacturers are supplied with the material they require,” he added.

And, the Partnership highlighted the fact that any contaminants that did enter the recycling stream were “not simply landfilled” and instead usually ended up at energy-from-waste plants.

WRAP

Further response to the story came from the chief executive of the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP), Liz Goodwin, who said: “Let's be clear, the vast majority of material put out for recycling is recycled.

“Almost ten million tonnes of waste was recycled in the UK last year, so if the 200,000 tonnes going to landfill figure is correct, that represents a tiny fraction (2%) and means that 98% of the material put out for recycling is actually recycled.

“There will always be some material put out for recycling which just cannot be recycled, perhaps because people have not understood the local arrangements. We can always do more to help people with this, but the amount is marginal compared to the amount of material which is correctly sorted,” she added.