Recycling post code lottery leads to poor rates

New analysis of the nation’s recycling ‘notspots’ has revealed a postcode lottery of different schemes leading to more than 80 per cent of waste not being sent for recycling in some areas.

Smartphone recycles Envirofone found that, despite larger amounts of waste being created across the country, the recycling rates of councils serving 14 million households in England have fallen over the last five years. According to the data, Westminster City Council are the worst recyclers in Britain, with 83 per cent per cent of their overall waste not being sent for recycling.

The data from Defra also revealed a host of other major cities producing shocking amounts of non-recycled waste, including Birmingham (76 per cent), Sunderland (74 per cent), Southampton (72 per cent), Sheffield (70 per cent) and Nottingham (70 per cent).

At the other end of the table, East Riding was recognised as the best recycling area in Britain, managing to send 65 per cent of their waste to recycling plants. Dorset and Rutland came joint second, sending 59 per cent of their overall waste to recycling plants.

Denise Timmis, head of online at Envirofone, said: “It really is shocking to see how little of our waste is recycled. As a company that is passionate about recycling, we think it’s really important to make as much use out of our materials as possible. We don’t need to give up on things so soon and we don’t always need to buy new - even damaged phones can be recycled! We hope our research helps to spread awareness of how much of our waste is currently not being recycled and encourages people to take extra measures to ensure we’re able to increase the amount of recycled waste here in the UK.”