Recycling

Baroness Neville-Rolfe Excerpts

Tuesday 9th October 2018 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what proportion of goods sorted for recycling by households in England eventually ends up in landfill.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Gardiner of Kimble) (Con)]

My Lords, English local authorities collected 11.1 million tonnes of waste for recycling in 2016-17, the most recent year for which figures are available. Around 90% of this was from households. An estimated 1.3% of the 11.1 million tonnes ended up in landfill in this country. We will publish plans to increase recycling and boost the UK recycling industry in our resources and waste strategy later this year.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, I certainly welcome the second part of my noble friend’s reply. We must examine how we can progress these issues. I hope he agrees that we need to draw on expertise from all sources and provide greater consistency and clearer labelling to avoid recycling chaos. I find the figure he gave me encouraging—it is low—but does he agree that we should also be concerned about UK recycling ending up in landfill overseas, as recently reported in Poland and previously in China?

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, I entirely agree with my noble friend that our ambition is to handle much more of our waste. We will set out proposals in precisely that area in our resources and waste strategy. Of course, across the European Union we and all other member states are working on the circular economy package. The aim is to have a 65% recycling rate by 2035. We in this country are ambitious and wish to meet or exceed those environmental benefits.