2021 | How Important is Recycling in the U.K

• A report released by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) earlier this year, revealed that British households create over 26m tonnes of waste each year, the weight of around 260 large cruise ships.
• This means that the average person in the UK throws away around 400kg of waste each year; 7 times their body weight.
• Of the 26m tonnes of waste produced in the UK, 12m tonnes are recycled, and 14m tonnes are sent to landfill sites. This gives us an average recycling rate of 45%.
• While we recycle around 44% of our waste in England, some of our neighbours are doing better, with Wales recycling 57% of its waste and Northern Ireland recycling 46%. Scotland falls slightly behind England, recycling 43% of household waste.
• Germany, Austria, and South Korea remain world-leaders when it comes to recycling household waste, recycling 60 – 70%.
• In the UK, we are only recycling 3% more waste than we did in 2010.
• The UK government has set a target for us to recycle 50% of all household waste by 2020.