Nottingham&#39s recycling “worst of any unitary authority in England”

Nottingham city council's waste management service was actually awarded two out of three stars after a Best Value review earlier this year, labelling it “good with promising prospects for improvement”. However, inspectors came down hard on the council for achieving their 55% landfill rate through incineration rather than recycling.

“The recycling rates for city waste have been low for some time now,” inspectors wrote. “The Council have been slow to address this issue by setting challenging targets partly because of the contract to incinerate waste which is more economic than recycling but has a greater environmental impact.”

At the moment, Nottingham city council collects 146,000 tonnes of municipal waste a year from 120,600 homes. Of this, a massive 41% is incinerated and only 4% is recycled.

“Heat generation is not classed as recycling and so it doesn’t help us achieve our recycling targets,” said Councillor Brian Grocock, Chair of Nottingham City Council’s Environment Policy and Development Review Committee. “However, we are well aware of our low recycling rate and have taken steps to bring in more recycling in the City.”

Targets
Audit Commission inspectors slated Nottingham's recycling targets, which are substantially lower than the targets set nationally under the government's Waste Strategy 2000. Nottingham's targets are 10% of household waste to be recycled by 2004 and 18% by 2006 compared to the national target of 25% by 2005, 30% by 2010 and 33% by 2015.

Inspectors warned: “These [targets] are modest in the case of Nottingham, and if achieved will only bring the performance level with that of the average unitary authority.”

But Councillor Grocock defended the council's plans, saying that a new household paper recycling scheme will start next month, covering 16,000 homes in the Clifton, Wilford and Sherwood areas.

He said: “This will enable residents to leave papers and magazines out for collection with their dustbins. This pilot project will be extended to 50,000 homes in 12 months time and eventually to the whole city.”