We all fear for future of the planet, so why has county’s recycling rate plummeted?
FIGURES SHOW A WORRYING FALL OF MORE THAN 10% IN PAST DECADE
THE amount of household waste being recycled in the county has fallen by more than 10 per cent in the past decade.
In 2010, district and borough councils in the Leicestershire County Council area were managing to recycle 56.4 per cent of all household waste - more than 173,000 tonnes that year.
It was then well above the national average, which stood at 41.5 per cent that year.
But the figure then began a steady reduction and by 2019 it was down to just 45.5 per cent - just over 140,000 tonnes.
That means Leicestershire County Council has probably missed the government target to recycle at least 50 per cent of waste by 2020, as have many other councils.
Figures for 2020 are not yet available.
County Hall was asked why the amount of refuse being recycled had dropped by nearly 33,000 tonnes over nine years.
A county council spokesman said: “These figures include reuse, recycling and composting for both kerbside collections and waste deposited at our recycling and household waste sites.
“We closely monitor recycling levels, which have been largely static over the past three years - and we continue to encourage residents to recycle as much as they can, using the services available.”
Leicester City Council, meanwhile, is also currently below the target of 50 per cent, but has seen its recycling rates increase overall in the past decade.
The city’s rate stood at just 39.8 per cent in 2010 and it rose a bit before falling to just 34.6 per cent in 2014, but then improved again to reach 42.9 per cent in 2019.
As well as being below the government’s target, the figure is below the national average for England, which is currently 43.8 per cent.
Deputy city mayor Councillor Adam Clarke, who leads on transportation and the environment, said: “It is very encouraging to see that Leicester’s recycling and composting rates for last year were within a hair’s breadth of the best we have ever recorded, but there is still more that we can all do.
“Thinking about the packaging we buy, trying to limit waste and consciously making the effort to recycle as much of the rubbish we produce as possible are three really simple things we can all do to help reduce our impact on the environment.”
Overall, the two councils between them dealt with more than 436,000 tonnes of waste collected from homes across Leicester and Leicestershire in 2019 and more than 195,000 tonnes of that was recycled.
One factor is the amount of waste recycling companies are able to deal with.
Greenpeace UK’s political campaigner, Sam Chetan-Welsh, said: “The UK is now all but certain to miss its 2020 recycling target and that’s just another sign of how broken our waste system is.
“The root of the problem is that we’re still producing way more rubbish than our recycling sector can cope with.
“As well as investing in better recycling and making it easier for people to sort their waste, we also need to turn off the tap at the source.
“That’s why the UK government must set legally binding targets to cut single-use plastic in half by 2025, ban exports of plastic waste, and introduce an all-inclusive deposit return scheme for drinks containers.”
David Renard, spokesman for the environment Local Government
Association, which represents councils up and down the country, said manufacturers needed to ensure more packaging was recyclable so councils did not have to send so much to landfill.
He said: “The next step in reducing unnecessary waste is to work with the government to address the responsibility of manufacturers of plastic packaging who continue to create and sell packaging that cannot be recycled and will be put in the recycling bin by people in good faith.
“The burden then falls on councils to not only collect it and dispose of it, but to pay the extra cost of disposing of it.
“We will be working with the Government and the waste industry as part of the Environment Bill to ensure this issue is addressed and to understand the impact of the ban on exports of plastic waste to nonOECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries.”
The Environment Bill, currently going through Parliament, includes measures to make producers cover the cost of collecting and recycling packaging waste and to introduce
regpdeposit return schemes and charges for single-use plastic items. A spokesman for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), said: “Recycling and reusing more of our waste and ensuring we get the most out of our precious resources are central to our ambition to leave the environment in a better state for future generations.
“We are making positive progress, with less than 10 per cent of household waste now going to landfill and the amount of food waste being recycled increasing by over 40 per cent since 2015.
“But there is still a lot more to do, and that’s why we have brought forward major reforms for packaging and kerbside collections which will boost recycling, step up our war on plastic pollution and reduce litter.”
More information about recycling for people in the county area is available at:
For information about waste and recycling in the city, go to: