By Isle of Wight Observer
Household recycling rates have dramatically improved on the Isle of Wight in the last year, according to new figures from Defra.
In a league table featuring 345 local authorities from across the country, the Island has jumped from 130th to 51st in the last 12 months.
In total, 53.4 per cent of all household waste is recycled on the Island – above the national average.*
This is an increase of 6.9 per cent in just one year.
Commenting on the results, Cabinet member for waste management, Councillor Michael Murwill, said: “This is a great achievement by our residents, working in partnership with the council, Amey and Island Roads, to achieve such a leap up the recycling league table in such a short time.
“Recent media reports have focused on food waste collections being introduced for all local authorities – we’re ahead of the game here and have been collecting food waste since 2012. We are also pushing ahead in creating a plastic waste/environmental forum and to that end, I’ve been working closely with Island groups and businesses.”
Principle manager for waste and recycling, Natasha Dix, added: “I’d like to thank our residents for taking on the task of recycling their waste so brilliantly which shows the results of our recycling promotion through events, social media campaigns and the council and our partners supporting Islanders.”
The national target for Local Authorities in England is to reach a 50 per cent recycling rate by 2020 – which the council is well on target to reaching.
The Isle of Wight Council introduced a number of changes to its waste and recycling services in the past 8 years which included:
• In 2011 separate weekly food waste collections and alternate weekly recycling and rubbish collections were started;
• In 2016, the separate collection of paper/card was introduced, alongside a kerbside textile collection and a reduced capacity 140 litre bin for fortnightly unrecyclable waste. Plastic, glass and metal recycling are collected separately in a 240 litre bin.
Between 2016/17 to 2017/18, landfilled municipal waste has fallen from 42.2 per cent to 38.4 per cent.
* (Household waste covers the kerbside collection service, the household waste recycling centres; litterbins, street sweeping and flytipping from domestic origin.)
