Recycling

Asked by: Lucy Allan (Independent - Telford)

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how much waste was recycled in (a) the Telford constituency (b) Shropshire and (c) the UK in each year since 2010.

Answered by Thérèse Coffey

The official harmonised measure used by the UK to report recycling figures is Waste from Households recycling. This data is reported under the Waste Framework Directive and published annually in our ‘UK Statistics on Waste’ publication. Figures from 2010-2016 are available in Table 1. Figures for 2015 and 2016 include a methodological change to now include metal recovered from incinerator bottom ash (IBA).

Table 1. UK Waste from Households recycling, 2010-16

We do not gather data on recycling rates at the constituency level. Instead, we have data for recycled household waste structured around local authorities. This is published annually in our ‘Statistics on waste managed by local authorities in England’. The household waste recycling data for individual local authorities is very similar but not exactly the same as the waste from households recycling measure. It is slightly broader than the ‘Waste from Households’ measure, because it also includes waste from street bins, street sweepings, parks and grounds and some difference in what is included as recycling as IBA metal is not included. This data is reported on a financial-year basis, and local authority data is available in Table 2 for ‘Telford and Wrekin Council’ and ‘Shropshire’ for 2010-11 to 2016-17.

Table 2. Household waste recycling at local authority level, 2010-11 to 2016-17