Just 44% of UK household waste is being recycled, government statistics show, as the recycling rate in England is going down instead of improving.
The UK recycling rate for waste from households was 44.1% in 2022, the latest year the government had data for, down from 44.6% in 2021.
However, that rate is mainly due to England failing to improve its recycling rate (43.4%). It is the only country in the UK that did not improve in 2022. Scotland’s recycling rate was the lowest, at 42.1%, but that was a rise from 41.7% the previous year.
Wales has a recycling rate of 56.9% for a number of reasons: Welsh households have had food waste bins for more than a decade, and it has been a priority for local authorities to improve recycling rates. Some areas in Wales have a recycling rate of 70%. Northern Ireland is also higher than England and Scotland, at 49.2%.
Recycling rates are better in Europe than in the UK; the EU has a household recycling rate of 49% against a minimum target of 50%. Before Brexit, the UK had been bound by this 50% target, too. The best country for recycling in the EU is Germany, which in 2021 had a rate of 68%.
The UK has lagged behind. This year the deposit return scheme for bottles, which has been found to increase recycling rates in other countries, was delayed. The scheme will now not be in place until almost a decade after it was first announced, and it will exclude glass.
The UK generated 191.2m tonnes of waste in 2020, with England responsible for 85% (162.8m tonnes) of the UK total.
Mary Creagh, the minister for the circular economy, said: “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.
“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.”
Rudy Schulkind, a political campaigner at Greenpeace UK, said: “These statistics are yet another example of the broken waste management system left over by the last government. The truth is the previous Tory government fumbled the ball, putting too much faith in our broken recycling system whilst failing to bring forward vital, meaningful measures like the delayed deposit return scheme.
“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. 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.”
