The latest provisional figures released by the Department of Environment also shows a five percentage point decrease in the amount of household waste sent to landfill from 65% in October to December 2010/11 to 60.2% for the same period in 2011/12.
While the amount of household waste sent to landfill dropped, the amount of waste arising stayed practically the same with 192,676 tonnes collected in the third quarter of 2011/12, just over a 1% decrease on the same period the previous year.
When looking at municipal waste, which includes household waste and commercial and industrial waste collected by councils, similar trends can be seen.
The amount of local authority collected municipal waste sent for recycling or composting rose by almost four percentage points between October and December 2011 from 31% in 2010/11 to 35% in 2011/12.
Within the 35% that was sent to be recycled or composted, more than a third (37%) was green waste, whilst paper accounted for 26%. A further 13% was accounted for by glass, electrical goods and cans.
The amount of biodegradable local authority municipal waste sent to landfill meanwhile fell by 5.5 percentage points from 66.9% in October to December 2010/11 to 61.4% for the same period in 2011/12.
In the period October to December 2011, a total of 78,426 tonnes of biodegradable local authority collected municipal waste was sent to landfill, which equates to almost 17% of councils annual allocation under the Landfill Scheme. This was an improvement compared to the 87,487 tonnes sent to landfill in the same period last year, which equated to almost 19% of last years allocation.
Encouraging
The figures were welcomed by Northern Irish Environment Minister Alex Attwood who encouraged householders to continue with their good work.
Mr Attwood said: It is pleasing to see a continued decrease in the amount of household waste generated, an even bigger decrease in waste landfilled and the biggest decrease of all in the high impact biodegradable waste landfilled. Waste materials are no longer something we can afford to casually throw away, they represent a real resource with real costs both environmental and economic.
It is encouraging to see this view being adopted by householders in particular and I note that waste generated per household has dropped to 260 kg from 265 kg in this busy pre-Christmas quarter. There is however much more that can be done and I want to see these figures improve still further. I congratulate all those people responsibly looking after their environment and I would encourage many more to do so.
Councils
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The local authority with the highest recycling and composting rate for the third quarter of 2011/12 was Magherafelt which hit 54.5%, followed by Larne on 50.2% and Antrim on 50%. These three councils were the only ones to break the 50% barrier for the quarter.
At the other end of the scale Belfast had the lowest recycling and composting rate for the quarter with 23.7% followed by Newry and Mourne on 27.7%.
In December 2011 the Department of Environment published its final figures for the 2010/11 financial year which hit 37.4% (see letsrecycle.com story).
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