Image courtesy of Defra

The Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has today (7 February) released provisional quarterly estimates for the first quarter of 2012/13 (April - June 2012) which show that recycling levels from local authority collected waste in England remained at 45 per cent, unchanged from the same period the year before.

Based on figures submitted by English local authorities (LAs) to WasteDataFlow, households generated 6.7 million tonnes of waste in Quarter 1 of 2012/13 – a reduction of two per cent (or 113kg per person) from the same quarter in 2011/12 – with over a third (2.3 million tonnes) of that sent to landfill (a reduction of 15 per cent).

This continues the trend first seen last year, of LAs sending more waste for recycling, reuse or composting than landfill.

Regionally, the East of England recycled the most in the year ending June 2012, with a rate of 49.6 per cent, followed by the South West with a rate of 47.1 per cent. London had the worst household recycling rate, with 33.8 per cent of waste recycled over the same period.

However, despite residual waste arisings falling, recycling levels remained at 45 per cent with ‘incineration with energy recovery’ increasing by over 20 per cent (to 1.3 million tonnes in the same quarter).

Speaking of the figures, a Defra spokesperson said: “It’s very encouraging that people are continuing to recycle at a record rate in England.

“As well as helping the environment, there’s also big financial savings to be made by recycling more. Businesses can save £22 billion annually by cutting out wasteful practices, whilst in the home, £12 billion can be saved by not throwing away perfectly edible food.

“More needs to be done and we’ll continue to work towards our goal of a zero waste economy with householders, businesses and councils all playing their part.”

The spokesperson declined to comment on whether the levelling off of recycling rates was a continuing trend until the final results have been released later this year.

According to the data, 43 per cent of household waste was recycled, composted or reused in the 12 months to the end of June 2012 – the same level as reported for the financial year of 2011/12 (April 2011 - March 2012), concerning some in the industry that recycling levels in England are now slowing down, as England relies more and more on incineration.

Inadequate collection and treatment infrastructure

National Coordinator for the United Kingdom Without Incineration Network (UKWIN), Shlomo Dowen, told Resource: "Most of what went to landfill or incineration could have been recycled or composted had the right collection and treatment infrastructure been in place. There is plenty of scope to further reduce residual waste arisings in line with the European milestone of getting residual waste close to zero by 2020.

“The increase in incineration is worrying, especially as many local authorities still do not have separate collections of food waste. The 2011/12 Statistical Release acknowledged that lower recycling rates could result from local authorities investing in incineration. I expect investment will now move away from incineration because we have more capacity then genuinely residual waste."

Levels 'over-reported'

Ray Georgeson, Chief Executive of a professional advocacy body for the reprocessing and recycling industries – the Resource Association – added that though the ‘continued steady decline of landfill is a testament to the success of the Landfill Tax’ there was concern about the ‘flatlining’ of ‘stated recycling rates’ and the accuracy of reported figures.

He said: “The flatlining of stated recycling rates is a cause for concern, especially as it is likely to be an over-reported figure. Defra themselves recently noted in their just published Quality Action Plan that ‘current recycling rates reported to WasteDataFlow are likely to be overestimates as many do not account for material rejected by the MRF during the sorting process in a robust manner.’”

“Until there is real transparency of data and reporting – from the point of collection, through sorting and on to end destination – debate about trends and performance on anything other than the real diminishing amounts of landfill will continue to be inadequately informed.”

The European target for household recycling rates is 50 per cent by 2020.

Provisional statistics for Quarter 2 will be released in May, with final estimates for 2012/13 published in November.

Read the provisional estimates for recycling in Q1 of 2012/13.