By Michael Smith (Veshengro)
According to Defra's latest quarterly figures England's household recycling rate now stands at 40.3%.
This figure, which takes into account the proportion of household waste sent for recycling, composting or reuse between October 2009 and September 2010, shows a slight increase up from 39.7% in the previous financial year, April 2009 to March 2010.
The generation of household waste has fallen slightly over the same period, with a 1% reduction to 23.4 million tonnes. The weight of household waste generated in the year October 2009 to September 2010 was 452 kg per person. While 182 kg of that was recycled, composted or reused, 270 kg was not.
Likewise, the amount of municipal waste sent to landfill in England has dropped to 45%, showing a decrease of 5% between the financial year 2009/10 and the year October 2009 to September 2010 to 11.9 million tonnes.
The statistics are based on data submitted by all local authorities in England to WasteDataFlow on the waste they collect and manage. Final estimates for 2010/11 will be published in November 2011.
I would like to ask though how those figures have been arrived at. It from a reduction in household waste - general waste - then we may better look at how many bin liners full of domestic refuse end up dumped in parks and open spaces and in the road ditches. That probably would give us a guide as to what the real truth is behind any reduction in waste in the “general” bins.
While they may claim that the amount of municipal waste sent to landfill has gone down that may also mean that the pickers at the dumps, aka recycling centers, have become better and also due to the fact that more plastics, for instance, now can, in fact, be recycled.
Municipal parks, however, have seen an increase in refuse being dumped in their litter bins and also being fly tipped and here we have anything from cat litter and other pet bedding, over canned food that has gone past its use by date, to bathtubs, toilets, etc.
However, a great deal of the rubbish dumped in the litter bins of parks now are small bags of domestic waste to large bin sacks of the same from homes in the neighborhood of those parks, no doubt.
The reduction in waste collected at the curbside may, thus, be but an illusion as to reduction in waste.
© 2011
