Wiltshire recycling rate drops to lowest since 2010

The council said the drop is partly due to a charge introduced for garden waste in 2015

A council's recycling rate has dropped to 40%, the lowest it has recorded for households since 2010.

Wiltshire Council's recycling rate is lower than the current figures for Somerset (56.3%) and Gloucestershire (51.5%).

Its highest recycling and compost rate was recorded in 2014-2015, when it reached 46.5%.

Wiltshire Council said the drop is partly due to a charge introduced for garden waste in 2015.

Councillor Nick Holder, cabinet member for waste said: "In Wiltshire, 'composting' is limited to garden waste, whereas other councils would include food waste in their figures if collected separately.

"Tonnages of garden waste are impacted by weather with a particularly dry summer resulting in slow growth rates and less garden waste being collected.

"Composting contributed 21% towards our 2014/15 recycling rate and in 22/23 this contribution had fallen to 17%."

The cabinet member also noted that dry recycling rates have been affected by the "light weighting" of packaging and changes in design, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

Kerbside collections

He said: "Although we now collect more items for recycling at the kerbside compared with 2014/15, the tonnage of some of the packaging items collected has reduced, and typically high tonnages of newspapers and magazines have also declined since 2014/15."

He also suggested that the cost-of-living pressures have contributed to a change in consumer behaviour and less waste being produced overall.

He concluded: "The key difference in Wiltshire's recycling performance compared with that of other councils is that they have introduced separate kerbside collections of food waste, which counts towards the 'composting' element of their overall performance.

"Currently food waste collected in Wiltshire is part of the kerbside residual waste sent for disposal at energy from waste plants where it produces electricity."

Wiltshire Council reported it was pleased that its "Recycling - Let's Sort It" campaign has been "nationally recognised".