UK recycling - it's less rubbish

Cheers and jeers for Britain’s recyclers this week.

According to government stats, the amount of rubbish taken for recycling went up by 31 percent last year. Hurrah!

However, England’s citizens are still producing more waste than ever, with the total amount of collected municipal waste increasing to an estimated 29.1 million tonnes. Boo!

But the proportion of municipal waste being recycled or composted increased from 27.1 per cent in 2005/06 to 30.7 per cent in 2006/07, according to Defra. Hurrah again!

More interestingly, there’s more energy recovery than ever coming from Britain’s bins. Defra says:

In total, 41.8 per cent (12.2 million tonnes) of municipal waste had some sort of value (recycling, composting, energy from waste and fuel manufacture) recovered from it in 2006/07, a rise from 37.2 per cent (10.7 million tonnes) in 2005/06.

And…

“The proportion of waste incinerated with energy recovery increased from 10 per cent in 2005/06 to 11 per cent in 2006/07. “