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

To ask Her Majesty's Government what data on the full costs and revenues of the various ways of recycling, or otherwise disposing of, the UK’s domestic waste stream they use to inform their policy in this regard.

We use the latest industry data on the cost of collection of waste and recycling, waste treatment and disposal. We work closely with the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) which has strong industry links and is well placed for tracking and revisiting the latest evidence on costs and revenues.

In terms of costs, one of the key sources of information is the so called gate fee price, i.e. the prices asked by different waste and recycling industry actors to process a certain type of material. Our latest Digest 2017, shows the latest trends in gates fees across facilities like materials recovery facilities, energy from waste plants, anaerobic digestion plants or landfill. There is more detail on the latest gate fee prices on WRAP’s website.

In terms of revenues, a key public source for material recycling revenues can be accessed at letsrecycle.com.

With respect to local authority costs and revenues of waste and recycling activities, a WRAP Consistency Framework summarises the core data in an evidence report (2016) which can be found on WRAP’S website. This is built on detailed assessments of local authority costs of collection and treatment, including elements like staff and non-staff costs as well as average revenues received for sold recyclates. Further information on this is provided in the WRAP Kerbside Analysis Tool available on Wrap’s website.