New English recycling tables put St Edmundsbury top

Top service: St Edmundsbury borough council has been confirmed as the number one council for recycling (with composting)

According to official government English local authority recycling figures for 2004/05 exclusively obtained by letsrecycle.com, St Edmundsbury, in west Suffolk, beat its closest rival Forest Heath, another Suffolk authority, by two percentage points with Forest Heath notching up a 48.59% rate.

The 2004/05 results are contained in data compiled by the Audit Commission which was due to have been published on December 15 2005. Last month local environment minister Ben Bradshaw stated: “Local authority Best Value Performance Indicators, which include information on household recycling rates, will be available on 15 December from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister's website.”

While figures were actually published on December 15 for Welsh local authorities, delays at the Audit Commission and the ODPM have meant the data for England has not been placed on the website as Mr Bradshaw expected. This meant that Defra has been unable to acknowledge the results this week as planned.

Now, after receiving the data from government, letsrecycle.com can exclusively report on the recycling Performance Indicators for England which show that only five councils remain under the 10% recycling level.

Last year's top performer, Lichfield which achieved a 46% recycling rate in 2003/04, slipped into fourth place in 2004/05 with an unchanged recycling rate. Daventry, which took second place in 2003/04, with a rate of 42% came in this time in seventh place but delivered a higher recycling rate of 45%. Among the new high performers are South Cambridgeshire at 46.8% and Harborough with 46%.

Households
Commenting on recycling in England in September this year, minister Ben Bradshaw said that English households “recycled more than a fifth of their waste, (approaching 23%) in 2004/05.”

He added: “Performance around the country varies with, on average, residents in the North East recycling the least (16%) and people in East of England recycling the most (29%). The greatest leap has been in the East Midlands, up 7% on last year to 27%.”

“Every person in England is currently recycling enough to fill 8 green wheelie bins, but we could be recycling as much as 20 bins worth – up to 60% of our waste.”

– Ben Bradshaw, September 2005

Looking ahead, the minister said: “Every person in England is currently recycling enough to fill 8 green wheelie bins, but we could be recycling as much as 20 bins worth – up to 60% of our waste.”

London and low performers
The top London authority in 2004/05 was Bexley with a 30.47% recycling rate, followed by Sutton at 27.86%, narrowly ahead of Hillingdon. Hillingdon, however, had the highest composting rate for London at 12.3%.

The London borough of Newham came last out of all English local authorities with a recycling rate of only 6.23%. Metropolitan authorities made up most of the low performers with the lowest unitary authority in the south being Bristol which recorded only a 12.44% recycling rate and Middlesbrough in the north at 10.16%.

Recycling vs composting
The 2004/05 English data shows clearly how high composting rates are helping to push up overall recycling rates dramatically. If recycling alone was considered, the top district authority would be Tamworth council which recorded an impressive 30.7% recycling rate which with a composting rate of 14% put it in eighth place overall.

Broadland district council in Norfolk had a 38.29% recycling rate although no composting rate was recorded for the council. Other high-flying recycling (excluding composting) district councils are Babergh in Suffolk with 30.5%, Chiltern 29.6%, Eastleigh 28.4% and East Hampshire with 27.5%.