Local authority municipal waste management: April 2021 to March 2022

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic had an impact on the collection and management of Welsh local authority municipal waste during 2020-21 and 2021-22. These should be considered when comparing against previous years and between local authorities.

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).

Main points

• The recycling rate decreased slightly from 65.4% in 2020-21 to 65.2% in 2021-22; this exceeds the target of 64% set in the ‘Beyond Recycling’ (2021) Strategy.
• 10 of the 22 local authorities reported an increase in their recycling rate compared to last year.
• 1.5 million tonnes of local authority municipal waste were generated, an increase of 1.4% on last year.
• Residual household waste per person decreased by 2.2%, falling from 182kg in 2020-21 to 178kg in 2021-22.

Notes

Data on waste management are collected in order to monitor progress towards national and local targets; in particular against the requirements of the Waste Framework Directive and the Landfill Directive. In its current waste strategy ‘Beyond Recycling’ (2021), the Welsh Government set statutory targets of recycling a minimum of 64% of waste by 2019-20, and 70 per cent of waste by 2024-25.

Data are sourced from the WasteDataFlow system, which is monitored by Natural Resources Wales. Quality information is available in accompanying quality report.