Government figures released yesterday confirmed that residents in Bath & North East Somerset made one of the biggest jumps of any local authority area in the country in the recycling and compost league table.
The jump from 100th to 50th out of 351 local authorities coincides with residents recycling or composting more than they send to landfill for the first time ever. The Department for the Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) figures for 2011/12 revealed that in the Bath and North East Somerset area, the average amount of waste per household disposed of during the year was 467kg. The amount of waste recycled, composted or reused was 52% with the amount going to landfill nearly 40%.
Councillor David Dixon (Lib-Dem, Oldfield), Cabinet Member for Neighbourhoods, said, “As a direct result of more and more households taking up food waste recycling and Bath & North East Somerset Council’s waste awareness campaigns which take place all year round, more local people than ever are recycling, composting or reusing. This is excellent news for the local taxpayer because the local taxpayer is less exposed to Landfill Tax charges and the area becomes more environmentally friendly as our carbon footprint is reduced.
“There is more that can be done. We estimate that around half of households still do not use their food recycling containers. The Council will be doing everything it can to encourage those households to play their part and move us even further up the national recycling league table.”
The key reason why the Council did not move even higher was because unlike many local authorities, it has retained weekly bin collections and is proposing to do so in 2013/14 subject to confirmation of Government funding for this purpose.
The DEFRA National Statistics Release headline results were:
- In 2011/12, 43 per cent of household waste was recycled. Although this is the highest recycling rate recorded for England, the rate of increase has been levelling off, with 2011/12 being the lowest year on year increase for ten years.
- Household waste generation was 22.9 million tonnes, continuing the year on year fall seen since 2007/8. This amounts to 431kg of waste per person.
- Local Authorities recycled, composted or reused 10.7 million tonnes of the waste they collected. This amounted to more than was landfilled for the first time since records began, although an increase in incineration may have partly accounted for the change in landfill.
There are many ways for local people to play their part in improving recycling rates even further. Lots of information is available on the Council’s website www.bathnes.gov.uk/wasteservices as well as a short video demonstrating how easy it is to food recycle.
