Local authority municipal waste management: April 2018 to March 2019

Main points

The recycling rate is the percentage of local authority municipal waste that was reused, recycled or composted. The recycling rate has increased considerably during the last two decades (from around 5% in the late 1990s). There was a small decrease in the rate between 2016-17 and 2017-18 partially due to improvement in data quality.

In 2018-19:

• the recycling rate remained relatively stable, with a very slight increase to 62.8%
• 12 of the 22 local authorities reported an increase in their recycling rate compared to last year
• 1.54 million tonnes of local authority municipal waste were generated, a decrease of 0.5% on last year and the lowest reported figure to date.