England’s Recycling Rate Down as Just 43.4% of Household Waste Recycled

Recycling bins for homes in West Burton, England. Michael Campbell Cole / iStock Editorial / Getty Images Plus

According to government data, the recycling rate of waste from households in England was 43.4 percent in 2022 — the most recent information available.

The rate was down from the previous year, when 44.1 percent of households recycled their waste.

England is the only United Kingdom nation whose recycling rate did not show improvement in 2022, reported The Guardian. The lowest rate for that year was in Scotland at 42.1 percent, but that was an improvement from the year before.

“It is deeply disappointing to see recycling rates have fallen, and to see the buildup of litter and fly-tipping in our cities, towns and villages,” said Mary Creagh, circular economy minister, as The Guardian reported. “The new government will move towards a zero-waste economy to increase recycling rates, draw in billions from private sector investment and create thousands of green jobs.”

In England, the weight of “waste from households” was down by 7.2 percent — from 23.1 million tonnes to 21.5 million tonnes — between 2021 and 2022, the statistics showed.

The recycling rate in Wales was 56.9 percent due to Welsh households having had food waste containers for over a decade, and local authorities prioritizing the improvement of recycling rates in the country. In some areas, the rate of recycling was 70 percent.

Northern Ireland’s recycling rate was also higher than Scotland and England at 49.2 percent.

In the rest of Europe, recycling rates were higher than in the UK. The household rate in the European Union was 49 percent, with the bloc’s minimum target set at 50 percent.

Germany had the highest recycling rate in the EU — 68 percent in 2021.

Bottle recycling was delayed in the UK this year — nearly a decade after the plan was initially announced.

Of the 191.2 million tonnes of waste generated by the UK in 2020, England was responsible for 85 percent.

“These statistics should be a wake-up call for the new government. Our recycling system is falling behind while mountains of waste are dumped, burned or shipped off to poorer countries. It is being undermined by huge volumes of cheap virgin plastic flooding the market. We need a bold new approach which focuses on reducing the amount of waste we produce in the first place,” said Rudy Schulkind, a Greenpeace UK political campaigner, as reported by The Guardian. “This November, the final round of negotiations on the global plastics treaty offers a last-chance saloon to tackle plastic pollution. We need a strong, legally binding global target to cut plastic production.”

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