Now in its second year, Eunomia’s Local Authority Recycling Carbon Index has been developed as an alternative measure of the environmental performance of councils’ waste and recycling services. With this indicator, which focuses on waste disposal authority areas, we aim to show which councils’ recycling services deliver the greatest carbon benefits. Once again, we have used WasteDataFlow as the primary source of recycling tonnages and converted these into carbon dioxide equivalents. The index still focuses on the direct carbon benefit from recycling without taking into account residual treatment.

We have made a few tweaks to the calculation to improve its accuracy. We’ve also, for the first time, given credit for recycling reported by authorities for the voluntary sector. Much of this relates to textiles, which bring significant carbon benefits, so those authorities most engaged with third-sector groups will see improvement in their performance.

Cheshire West and Chester (CWAC) moved up from second place in 2011/12 to top both the English and the overall index for 2012/13. Across the border in Wales, Powys moved up from its mid-table position to top the Welsh index. Both authorities’ improved performance has been driven by a change in collection system (in both cases to fortnightly refuse collections with small residual bins and weekly recycling and separate food waste collections). Because neither authority had fully rolled out the service by the end of 2012/13, we expect to see both achieve further improvements in the next Recycling Carbon Index.

As with recycling, some authorities’ performance continues to rise, helping to buoy up the whole country. But looking past the rising stars, there’s a slightly less positive tale to tell. Although one can’t infer a trend from just two years’ data, it’s concerning that there has been a three per cent decrease for England and Wales in the carbon saved from recycling. By comparison, Northern Ireland’s performance has improved by one per cent.

In England, 58 per cent of authorities saw a fall in performance. Both Northern Ireland and Wales saw 73 per cent of authorities’ performances fall. Whilst we’ve seen a worrying flatlining in recycling, the fall in the carbon benefit is more troubling still: in places, the environmental benefit delivered by our sector appears, by this metric, to be declining. Although one expects some level of random variation, it’s troubling to see any falls in performance just as the European Commission is recommending statutory 70 per cent recycling targets for municipal waste.

It’s also revealing to reflect on why, with recycling rates still struggling upwards, the Recycling Carbon Index shows a fall. Taking England as an example, food waste capture increased between 2011/12 and 12/13, whether it was separately collected or mixed with green waste. Although the increases were slower than we’d like, they were good for recycling rates and directly reduced greenhouse gas emissions. On the other hand, textile and metal recycling were down, and although the drops were smaller than the gains in food waste recycled, the embodied carbon in textiles and metals is sufficient that the net effect was negative, dragging England’s performance down overall.

In Belfast, conversely, recent efforts to engage schools with textile recycling have seen large increases in the quantity diverted from disposal. Although municipal waste flow is obviously far too complicated and large for this scheme to have a decisive impact on overall performance, the benefit from that focus on textile recycling (from schools and other sources) is noticeable within the data.

Even with a difficult financial context, changing waste composition, and unsupportive central government policies, it’s heartening to see that some authorities continue, through imagination and hard work, to achieve important recycling and carbon benefits from changing the way the public manage their waste.

To accompany the 2012/13 Recycling Carbon Index, Eunomia has launched an online web tool, available at: www.eunomia.co.uk/carbonindex