Northern Ireland sees waste arisings fall by 3.8%

The data published by the Department of Environment (DoE) shows that a total of 913,546 tonnes of waste was produced across the year, the lowest level it has reached since the data has been monitored.

Of this, 53.6% was sent to landfill with 6.9% being sent for energy recovery. 38.7% of the waste was sent for recycling or composting, with growth in the recycling rate slowing to its lowest level since 2002, and at 0.4% points was significantly lower that the growth achieved in 2011/12 (3% points).

According to the DoE, levelling off of recycling rates may be in part due to the severe weather conditions experienced across Northern Ireland in the final quarter of this reporting period.

The Department claimed that this had impacted on local authority waste kerbside collections, access to recycling facilities and early plant growth so reducing organic garden waste normally sent for composting.

Environment Minister Mark H Durkan welcomed the fall in residual waste but admitted that there were concerns over the rate of growth of recycling rates.

He said: Maintaining the high performance achieved by councils last year by continuing to exceed their biological waste landfill targets is a significant achievement. Although there continues to be a reduction in waste being produced, a slowdown in the growth of recycling rates demonstrates we cannot afford to be complacent all of us can easily convert our waste to a resource by simply using the kerbside recycling service by councils.

The recent publication of the revised Waste Management Strategy Delivering Resource Efficiency sets out a coherent long term plan of actions in which we can all participate. I call on both householders and local industry to look at how they can save on landfill tax costs and increase their profitability by re-examining their business and not creating waste in the first place. Its in everyones best interest.

Wales

Elsewhere Wales, which announced this month that it had met its 52% statutory recycling target in 2012/13 (see letsrecycle.com story), yesterday published its local authority recycling and waste management data for the first quarter of 2013/14.

The provisional data showed that for the first three months of the year, Wales councils recycled 55% of their municipal waste, up 2% from the same quarter in the previous year (see letsrecycle.com story).