Household Waste Recycling Increases in England

Household Waste Recycling Increases in England

England’s household waste recycling rate has increased to 45.1 per cent for 2016/17 after dropping last year, and this is partly down to increases in the use of energy from waste facilities and separate food waste collections by local authorities say DEFRA.

How local authorities manage waste

Local authorities in England reduces the waste they sent to landfill by 19.4%, but only 4% of that was recycled or composted. 9% of the waste was incinerated, which amounts to 1 million tonnes. The amount of waste being incinerated has doubled in the last 5 years.

Food waste sent for composting and anaerobic digestion was up 15%, from 353,000 tonnes to 307,000 tonnes.

The best and worst local authorities for recycling household waste

The top 10:

East Riding of Yorkshire - 65.4%

Rochford District Council - 63.9%

South Oxfordshire District Council - 63.8%

West Oxfordshire District Council - 63.4%

Vale of White Horse District Council - 62.5%

Surrey Heath Borough Council - 62.3%

Three Rivers District Council - 61.9%

South Northamptonshire District Council - 61.4%

Trafford Metropolitan Borough Council - 61.3%

Stratford-on-Avon District Council - 61.3%

The bottom 3:

Newham London Borough Council – 14%

Westminster City Council - 17%

Lewisham London Borough Council - 185

Waste-to-Energy – an introduction

So many local authorities have increased their use of energy to waste facilities, but what is waste to energy, and is it the way forward?

Waste to energy is all about creating energy from the waste we throw away, by using combustion to produce heat, steam, or electricity. Fuels like methane and ethanol can be produced by the combustion process.

The future

While we all know that we should recycle and reuse as much waste as we can, there are environmentally-friendly methods of using waste that would otherwise just be discarded and end up in landfill. When energy to waste treatment is used on a large scale it can produce a lot of energy that is not dependent on fossil fuels. Fossil fuels won’t last forever, and it’s time we looked to other means of producing energy that doesn’t cause untold harm to our planet.