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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what proportion of waste sorted for recycling has ended up in landfill in (a) St Helens North constituency, (b) Merseyside and (c) the UK in each year since 2010.

Waste data is reported by all local authorities in England and the UK for all local authority collected waste. Rejects are recorded at three points in the waste movement chain, i.e. waste that is rejected at kerbside collection, at the materials recovery facility and at the gate of re-processors.

Information on the amount of recycling rejects as a proportion of all local authority waste collected and sent for recycling is provided in Table A. For England for the three years 2011/12, 2012/13 and 2013/14, approximately one third of the total recycling rejects or 1% of all local authority waste collected and sent for recycling were disposed to landfill. Information on the disposal of recycling rejects for England for other years and for individual local authorities is not readily available.

Table A Recycling rejects as a proportion of total local authority waste collected and sent for recycling¹ (%)

1: includes preparation for re-use and composting.

2: no rejects were reported for 2011/12 to 2014/15. .

The data is published through the annual results for local authority collected waste and can be viewed at: www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/env18-local-authority-collected-waste-annual-results-tables with additional information on rejects published through several freedom of information requests available at: www.gov.uk/government/collections/defra-foi-eir-releases.