Householders in England are now recycling and composting 17.7% of their household waste, according to the Municipal Waste Management Statistics 2003/04, published today. This figure is up 3.2 percentage points from the 14.5% recycling rate achieved in 2002/03.
”England is making excellent progress on recycling, but we must not be complacent “
Margaret Beckett
Mrs Beckett said: “England is making excellent progress on recycling, but we must not be complacent – we must now work towards our more ambitious national target of recycling and composting a quarter of household waste by 2005/06.”
The environment secretary said the government is making it easier for people to recycle through work with supermarkets on front-of-store recycling and is committed to ensuring all householders have kerbside recycling collections by 2010 with additional funding for local authorities. “We are also funding pilots into incentive schemes for household recycling,” she added.
Other key trends highlighted by today’s report included:
- For the first time, a 1.0% reduction in the total amount of municipal waste generated – from 29.4 million tonnes in 2002/03 to 29.1 million tonnes in 2003/04.
- A 2% reduction in the amount of household waste collected per person per year (down from 520kg in 2002/03 to 510kg in 2003/04).
- For the second year in a row a further reduction in the amount and proportion of waste being sent to landfill has been recorded – a reduction from 22.1 million tonnes in 2002/03 and 20.9 million tonnes in 2003/04.
- Kerbside collection schemes are growing in popularity, waste collected for recycling in this way increased by 50% in 2003/04.
- Bring sites, including bottle banks and civic amenity sites, continue to be a popular way to recycle waste – 58% of all waste that was recycled was collected via these sites.
Regional results
As well as presenting the national picture, today’s figures show that there are significant variations in household recycling rates between different regions.
The highest recycling regions were the East (23.2%) and the South East (22.7%). Despite recording the lowest rate at 11.9%, recycling of household waste in the North East is growing faster than anywhere else in England with Householders in the region recycling 80% more waste during 2003/04 than they did in 2002/03.
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Mrs Beckett concluded: “There is a growing list of materials you can recycle either through kerbside collection schemes or recycling collection points from junk mail to plastic milk containers to drink cans.”
As well as meeting a 25% household waste recycling or composting target for 2005/06, Defra's waste management strategy also sets a target for recovering value – through energy-from-waste or recycling – from 40% of municipal waste.
The current recovery rate for municipal waste in England was 27.9% in 2003/04, which means England would require extra recovery capacity amounting to as much as three million tonnes within the next twelve months to meet the target.
[…] Over the last decade, domestic recycling rates have risen dramatically, in England from 17.7 per cent in 2004 to 44.3 per cent in 2015. Households are doing their bit, despite the irritations of multiple bins. […]