Liberal Democrats take swipe at 2004/05 recycling rates

The Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs this week published its data on English local authority recycling rates. The 2004/05 figures saw the first ever council to recycle half its waste and England as a whole getting very close to its 25% recycling target for 2005/06.

” If we want to see real progress on recycling then we have to look at giving help to those areas which face particular challenges in the collection, sorting and processing of waste “
– Dan Rogerson, Liberal Democrats
But despite these positive results the Liberal Democrats believe that there are still negatives that need to be acted on.

Dan Rogerson, Environment spokesperson for waste and recycling for the Liberal Democrats, said: “If we want to see real progress on recycling then we have to look at giving help to those areas which face particular challenges in the collection, sorting and processing of waste.

“While the government will no doubt want to draw attention to the high figures achieved in some areas, it is high time that they faced up to the fact that the situation in other councils is very different,” he added.

Top heavy

The Liberal Democrats also drew attention to the fact that 38% of waste was recycled by the best councils, while just 5% was dealt with by the worst.

But despite the recycling results failing to impress the Liberal Democrats, the Local Authority Recycling Advisory Committee was quick to congratulate its members for their performance.

Chair of LARAC, Joy Blizzard, said: “The top performers are now producing results that only a few years ago were thought to be impossible. LARAC members have been working extremely hard at rolling out new schemes and producing high quality communications campaigns and we are now seeing the fruit of that.

“Whilst not wishing to take anything away from the highest performing local authorities with recycling rates over 40%, it is important to realise that there have been improvements across the boards – with the numbers of low performing authorities rapidly decreasing. In 2002/03 there were 124 authorities below 10% and now there are only 5,” she added.