J3: Municipal waste recycling rates

Short description

This indicator shows changes in municipal waste recycling rates in England. The municipal waste recycling rate is the fraction of household waste and waste similar in nature and composition to household waste, which is recycled. The indicator reflects levels of everyday waste that is recycled and not sent for final disposal. Development of the Defra ‘waste tracking’ tool and further integration with data collected by local authorities will close some of the data gaps and enable collection of more comprehensive data.

Readiness and links to data

This indicator is not available for reporting in 2021 in a finalised form. An interim indicator is presented here that shows trends in ‘household waste’ and ‘waste from households’ recycling rates. These data are already published annually as National Statistics, but further development is required to include waste that is similar in nature and composition to household waste such as non-household municipal waste. Information is available about the development of Defra’s ‘waste tracking’ tool.

Trend description

In the 2019/20 financial year, the recycling rate for ‘waste from households’ was 45.5%, up 3.6 percentage points on the equivalent figure for 2010/11 (when the measure was first reported). While the measure of ‘household waste’ recycling is based on a slightly broader definition of waste and therefore not directly comparable to ‘waste from households’, there has been a 34.3 percentage point increase in the waste recycling rate across the 2 measures between 2000/01 and 2019/20.