English households recycle 33% of waste

New statistics released by the Department for Environment, Food and Agriculture (Defra) reveal that the level of household rubbish recycled in England has risen above 33%.

The most up to date quarterly figures submitted by local governments to the central WasteDataFlow database show that between October 2006 and September 2007 English households recycled an average of 33.2% of their rubbish.

This is a significant increase on the 30.6% rate between April 2006 and March 2007.

The quarterly amount of waste going to landfill dropped marginally due to the increased level of recycling, from 16.9 million tonnes to 16.1 million tonnes.

Best at recycling are the east of England and the south west, with recycling rates of 40%.

London performed the worst, with recycling rates of 24%, but also produces the least amount of rubbish per household.

Current government targets aim for the whole country to reach recycling rates of 40% by 2010.

Paul Bettison, the chairman of the local government authority’s environment board, said that although the figures are ‘pleasing’, much more needs to be done if the UK is to avoid £3 billion fines for the amount of waste it sends to landfill.

He added that some European countries are currently recycling twice as much as the UK.

Although the new recycling statistics are good news for the environment, the bigger picture looks bleaker.

The national office of statistics recently released figures showing the environmental behaviour trends of UK residents, with car use and air travel increasing significantly.