THERE has been a huge decline in the amount of rejected recycling in recent years, although the rate of household recycling has also slightly decreased.
As part of the council's £4.2m waste strategy for 2023-30, an updated recycling system was rolled out in September 2023 to reduce the amount of waste and cross-contaminated recycling.
The separated bags and boxes system did cause controversy in some quarters of town, with some residents reporting items blowing away in the wind while others criticised its cost and cited 'simpler' recycling systems.
However, this waste strategy and an emphasis on recycling seems to have paid dividends as rejected recycling items has decreased by hundreds of tonnes.
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In 2020-21, data from the Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) showed that 262 tonnes of household waste was estimated to have been rejected from recycling streams.
With recycling items rejected due to cross-contamination or being put in the wrong bins, this figure was estimated to have cost taxpayers an estimated £24,366 over the year.
However, further DEFRA data shows that there was a reduction to 171 tonnes of rejected waste in 2021-22.
This amount of household waste being rejected for recycling then dropped significantly to 35 tonnes in 2022-23, according to the data published last month.
In total, the data shows that St Helens Council collected around 68,000 tonnes of waste in 2022-23, with 62,910 tonnes of this collected from households.
Around 21,380 tonnes of this household waste was successfully recycled, with just 35 tonnes rejected from recycling streams.
The council has put this reduction down to its new waste strategy, which was discussed by the cabinet in March 2023 and rolled out across the borough in September.
Despite the reduction in rejected recycling, the data does show that the percentage of household waste sent for recycling decreased from 36.8% in 2021-22 to 34% in 2022-23, which is the lowest figure since 2012-13 (excluding the pandemic year of 2020-21).
Councillor Andy Bowden, St Helens Borough Council's Cabinet Member for Environmental Services and Climate Change, said: “A reduction in rejected items is proof that our separated system, rather than comingled which can see 30 percent of items rejected, is the best approach when it comes to recycling as there is less risk of contamination and I would like to thank residents and council staff for playing their part in this.
“Although we’re still in the relatively early stages of our new and improved service which only launched at the back end of last year, we are pleased with how it’s going so far but realise that there can always be room for improvement when it comes to increasing recycling rates which we’re looking to achieve.
“Through our cost-effective and efficient kerbside system which saves having to pay for recycling to processed like we’d have to if collected in one bin, we're aiming to make waste a thing of the past, looking at waste as a resource first - working together to reduce, reuse and recycle as much of our waste as possible on our green journey to achieve net zero.”
For more information on recycling, visit: www.sthelens.gov.uk/recycling
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