North Somerset council saved the highest amount of carbon emissions through its recycling services in England, Wales and Northern Ireland in 2011/12, according to a report published today (November 19) by consultancy Eunomia.
The council saved 112 kilograms of carbon in 2011/12 and, according to the waste consultancy, if every authority performed at this standard the UK would save 6.72 million tonnes of carbon each year the equivalent of taking 2.2 million cars off the road.
Eunomias local authority Recycling Carbon Index assesses the carbon emissions impact of disposal authorities recycling work in England, Wales and Northern Ireland in 2011/12, measuring the kilograms of carbon emissions saved per person by each local authoritys dry recycling service.
It follows the publication of Englands local authority recycling league table last month (see letsrecycle.com story), which showed Rochford district council coming out top in 2012/13 with a 66.75% recycling rate. At the other end, Ashford council had a recycling rate of just 12% in 2012/13.
However, the Eunomia report assesses local authority carbon performance and focuses only on disposal authorities rather than collection authorities. It shows that the worst performers overall in England, Wales and Northern Ireland were all in London, with Tower Hamlets (20kg pp), Brent (25kg pp), Hackney (26kg pp) and Lewisham (27kg pp) making up the bottom four in the table.
In Wales, Cardiff is the worst performer at 54kg of carbon saved per person per year, while the top spot is occupied by Wrexham on 108kg pp, followed by the Isle of Anglesey (102kg pp) and Ceredigion (100kg pp).
Meanwhile, the best performing authority in Northern Ireland was Antrim borough on 92kg per person, with Down district (41kg pp) at the bottom just below Belfast on 48kg pp.
Top 10 recycling performing authorities (in carbon terms) per person in England, Wales and NI in 2011/12
Textiles and metals
The report found that better performers on carbon savings generally recovered larger amounts of textiles and metals, stating that recycling of these materials is very important for offsetting carbon emissions. Those recovering larger amounts from household waste and recycling centres (HWRCs) also tended to perform better.
According to Eunomia, the materials found to have the highest embodied carbon were aluminium cans; textiles and footwear; steel cans; and plastics.
‘By publishing the Recycling Carbon Index we hope that we will help authorities to better understand the carbon benefits that their services achieve.’
James Fulford, director at Eunomia
However, recovering more food from separate food waste collections is also an indicator of better carbon performance. This is because energy recovery through anaerobic digestion (AD) far outperforms the treatment process used when garden and food waste are mixed together, which is often in-vessel composting (IVC), the report states.
Commingled
Interestingly, the Eunomia found that there was a limited correlation between carbon performance and the type of collection used by the authority whether kerbside sort or commingled. Although the majority of authorities use commingled collection, those with kerbside sort collections appear at both ends of the Index.
The Index is based on carbon impact modelling carried out by the consultancy on behalf of the likes of Defra, the Greater London Authority (GLA) and a large number of councils in England and Wales. It is a similar approach to that used in Scotland, where councils report on their performance against the Carbon Metric.
Related Links
James Fulford, Director at Eunomia, said: Generally councils have had to rely on a crude comparison of recycling rates to measure the performance of their services. By publishing the Recycling Carbon Index we hope that we will help authorities to better understand the carbon benefits that their services achieve. The report will also help waste managers to understand what they need to do if they want to improve the environmental performance of their own services.
Eunomia said it also intends to include the carbon benefits of waste prevention in future work, which would look at household waste arisings, but decided to exclude residual waste treatment from the new Index as this tends to obscure the messages on recycling performance.
Register for free to comment