New Figures Show Less Waste Being Sent To Landfill In North West

Date published: 29/03/2006

The amount of municipal waste being sent to landfill in the North West has been cut by 265,000 tonnes during 2004/05, new provisional national statistics show.

The figures show that there has been a reduction in both the tonnage and the proportion of waste being sent to landfill sites  - down from 3.491 million tonnes in 2003/04 to 3.226 million tonnes in 2004/05.

At the same time, there is increasing evidence of a slow down in the growth in the amount of municipal waste being produced - average annual increases have dropped to 1.1% in the past 5 years, compared to 4% in the preceding 5 years.

Local Environmental Quality Minister, Ben Bradshaw said today's figures are a sign that things are continuing to move in the right direction, "This is an extremely encouraging development. Less municipal waste is being sent to landfill which means that more waste is being put to better use through recycling and reuse, or indeed is being prevented in the first instance. Diverting increasing amounts of waste from landfill through recycling is in no doubt thanks in part to better quality council services, including greatly expanded and more efficient kerbside recycling collection schemes. But also I suspect that community reuse projects such as the Freecycle initiative and indeed the growing popularity of auction websites which encourage reuse are playing a part too.It shows that despite the warnings we can and are turning a corner in the way we manage our waste."

The announcement coincides with the Government's ongoing consultation on its review of England's waste strategy. The consultation proposes not only much greater levels of recycling (with a 50% recycling target for 2020) but a much greater emphasis on waste minimisation in the first instance.

The Government intends to encourage waste minimisation by engaging with businesses and manufacturers so that products are designed to be easy to recycle or recover and with a limited environmental impact before they even reach consumers.