The UK as a whole recycled 43.9 per cent of waste from households in 2012, new statistics from the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) have shown.
Released today (25 September), Defra’s ‘UK statistics on waste – 2010 to 2012’ show that UK local authorities recycled 11.6 million tonnes of the 26.4 million tonnes collected from householders in the calendar year of 2012.
The figures, calculated by Defra ‘in accordance with the Waste Framework Directive’ using data from WasteDataFlow, reveal that over the three years, the UK’s recycling rate (including reuse and composting) rose by 3.7 per cent despite household waste arisings falling.
However, the UK’s recycling increases over those three years were heavily reliant on the achievements of Scotland and Wales, which saw their respective recycling rates increase by 6.8 per cent (to 37.9 per cent) and 8.5 per cent (to 52.5 per cent). England and Northern Ireland had less impressive results, with household recycling levels increasing by 3.0 per cent and 3.7 per cent respectively.
Indeed, the ‘plateauing’ of recycling in England has previously led Defra to warn that ‘the rate of increase… is insufficient to meet the 50 per cent EU target by 2020’.
Of all the UK countries, England produced the vast majority of waste – with householders producing 21.9 million tonnes.
Disparity of figures
The statistics vary slightly to those previously released by Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, as the devolved governments use the NI 192 measure when referring to household waste (which could include things like soil and rubble), while the Defra figures use the ’waste from householders’ measure, as required by the European Commission.
Scotland’s official figures for 2012 suggest that its local authorities recycled 41.2 per cent of household waste, not 37.9 per cent; Wales’s statistics show that for the 12 months to December 2012, it recycled, reused and composted 52 per cent; and Northern Ireland has previously reported that it recycled and composted 39 per cent in the calendar year of 2012.
England’s recycling rate of 44.1 per cent is the same in both this release and previous Defra statistics.
BMW and C&I waste
The UK biodegradable municipal waste (BMW) figures show that 10.3 million tonnes was sent to landfill in 2012, 29 per cent of the 1995 baseline value. There is an EC target to contain BMW to landfill to within 35 per cent by 2020.
Finally, the Waste Statistics Regulation return for 2012 estimated waste generation from commercial and industrial economic activities in the UK to be 48.0 million tonnes in 2012, of which 39.4 million tonnes was from England.
Read the ‘UK statistics on waste data – 2010 to 2012’.
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