The figures published today by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs show that the nation's local authorities have averaged a 30.9% recycling and composting rate in 2006/07.
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Key stats: England 2005-07 |
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| 2005/06 | 2006/07 | |
| Municipal waste: | ||
| Collected | 28.7 mt | 29.1 mt |
| Recycled | 27.1% | 30.7% |
| Recovered | 37.2% | 41.8% |
| Incinerated | 10% | 11% |
| Landfilled | 62% | 58% |
| Household waste: | ||
| Collected | 25.5 mt | 25.9 mt |
| Recycled | 26.7% | 30.9% |
The improvement matched the increase in the recycling rate seen the previous year, when a 26.7% rate was achieved.
This year's recycling efforts were spearheaded by local authorities in the East, East Midlands and South West – those regions averaged a 35% recycling rate.
London once again proved to be the worst English region for recycling, achieving a 22% rate.
Along with increases in recycling rate, the figures drawn from local government database WasteDataFlow revealed a 1.4% growth in the amount of waste collected from households, which stood at 25.9 million tonnes for 2006/07.
Commenting on the figures, a spokeswoman for Defra said: “These figures are encouraging and demonstrate good progress towards our target of recycling or composting 40% of our household waste by 2010.
“They show that people are aware of the need to avoid, reuse and recycle waste wherever possible and are increasingly backing this up with action. This is essential both because we can't keep dumping waste into holes in the ground and because landfilled waste is a major emitter of methane – a potent greenhouse gas.
“But we need to do more. We still lag behind much of Europe and we cannot afford to be complacent. We need to keep raising our performance if we are to meet future challenging landfill targets,” the Defra spokeswoman continued.
The unaudited figures do not include performance statistics for individual English councils, but these are expected to be released by Defra in unaudited form soon.
Municipal
According to the figures, the amount of municipal waste collected by councils – which includes both household waste and some trade waste – grew by 1.4% to 29.1 million tonnes.
The municipal waste recycling and composting rate was 30.7% in 2006/07, compared to 27.1% in 2005/06. Thanks in part to incineration capacity, the amount of municipal waste sent to landfill fell from 62% to 58%. The proportion of waste incinerated increased by 1% compared with the previous year.
The actual tonnage of municipal waste going to landfill in 2006/07 was 16.9 million tonnes.
In terms of household waste, which represented 89% of English municipal waste in 2006/07, the average amount of waste thrown away by each household was 509 kg.
Defra said that in absolute terms, the amount of household waste sent for recycling rose by 17% to eight million tonnes in 2006/07.
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