Data for 2002/03 shows that the tonnage of municipal waste landfilled fell from 22.3 million tonnes in 2001/02 to 22.0 million tonnes.
DEFRA is thought to be delighted at the figures which it believes show that England is well on the way to meeting recycling targets and is making a little headway in reducing the volume of waste sent to landfill.
” The total amount of waste landfilled by local authorities in 2002/03 has gone down for the first time, by about 500,000 tonnes. This is the first time this has ever happened.“
– Ray Alderton, DEFRA's head of landfill policy
Speaking at a meeting in Westminster last night, Ray Alderton, head of landfill policy at DEFRA, expressed the department's satisfaction with the figures, saying that “the total amount of waste landfilled by local authorities in 2002/03 has gone down for the first time, by about 500,000 tonnes. This is the first time this has ever happened.”
Mr Alderton added that the figures which are contained within the Municipal Waste Management Survey published this week, show that “we are on target to meet the 2006 target for recycling, so we would be at least three-quarters of the way to meeting 2010 targets.”
Publishing the figures today, DEFRA explained the total amount of municipal waste produced in 2002/03 was 29.3 million tonnes, an increase of 1.8% on 2001/02, and of this tonnage 75% was landfilled, down from 77% in 2001/02.
DEFRA confirmed: “For the first time in recent years the actual tonnage of municipal waste disposed of in landfill has also decreased slightly from 22.3 million tonnes in 2001/02 to 22.0 million tonnes in 2002/03. It is now about the same level it was in 1999/00.”
Household waste
The figures for household waste showed it made up 88% of municipal waste with the remainder coming from councils' cleansing services and trade waste collections.
In 2002/03, English households produced a total of 25.8 million tonnes of waste, an increase of 1.1% on 2001/02, but factoring in population growth means there was an increase per person of just 0.8%.
For recycling, the statistics confirmed that in 2002/03 England recycled or composted 14.5% of household waste and 15.6% of municipal waste.
Full provisional results of the Municipal Waste Management Survey are available on DEFRA's website and the official results are expected to be published this summer.
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