Now in its third year, Eunomia’s Local Authority Recycling Carbon Index aims once again to shed some light on what household recycling collection services are achieving in carbon terms through avoided disposal and need for virgin materials. Carbon calculations based on WasteDataFlow information for 2013/14 show a more encouraging picture than in 2012/13. The carbon performance of recycling services in England, Wales and Northern Ireland have all improved, which is particularly welcome given the previous year’s performance dips in both England and Wales. In England, 63 per cent of authorities’ recycling services improved in carbon terms. Northern Ireland fared even better with 77 per cent of authorities showing an improvement, and in Wales the picture was better still with a full 81 per cent showing an upward trend. Whilst England’s recycling rate increased by only 0.3 per cent in 2013/14 – the much discussed flatlining – the tonnage capture of carbon-intensive metals and plastics rose by eight and nine per cent respectively. If the aim is avoided greenhouse gases, then recycling more of the right materials is more important than increasing overall recycling – an important fact sometimes obscured by our focus on crude weight-based targets. Paper recorded as separately collected has declined by two per cent – equivalent to 30,000 tonnes – a sign of the gradual move from paper to electronic-based information, reinforced recently by the high-profile closure of one of the UK’s largest paper recycling mills. Although we tend to look at the carbon performance of whole waste management systems, including treatment and disposal, when working for individual authorities, for the Recycling Carbon Index we look only at collection system performance. This is because different approaches to treatment and disposal would obscure the messages about how to optimise collection systems to get the best carbon performance. More waste officers work on waste collection, and it is for these officers, considering the issues of collection service design, management and communication, that we hope the index will be most helpful. Our approach, however, isn’t without issues, because it doesn’t include waste prevention. This emphatically isn’t because we think prevention is unimportant, but because accounting for it is notoriously difficult and even more so in a league table where it is almost impossible to fairly reflect the influence of demographic variation and collectively reported HWRC waste. The focus of the Recycling Carbon Index is therefore quite narrow: once authorities have done all they can on waste prevention, how best can they design collection services to maximise carbon performance? Previously, we’ve looked at which authorities are moving up and down. This year, we’re aiming to draw attention to differences in service type in a more general sense. The aim is to identify what authorities at the top of the table are doing that helps them to achieve their position. In our rankings (see the report included with this issue of Resource), we group authorities by ONS area classification to reflect the underlying demographic and geographic variation, which are as important as service design in determining recycling performance. High population density in city centres means more flats and difficult-to-serve properties. It also means a greater communication and promotion challenge with, for example, a younger, more transient population in rental accommodation. It is no surprise then, that the best performing authorities are more rural in nature. The South West in particular is a good example of this, with three of the top five performing authorities, as is the particularly stark difference in Leicestershire, where the county, which is placed fourth overall, surrounds the city with the second poorest performance outside of London. A similar story is found with Cardiff in Wales, though Belfast in Northern Ireland has bucked the trend with a continued focus on textile recycling in schools. We hope that this rate of improvement continues in subsequent years and that authorities gain insight into how they can improve further by looking at their counterparts higher up in the index for innovative ways to improve their performance. An online tool that supports the report is available at: www.eunomia.co.uk