Cambridgeshire third worst in the UK for innovative recycling on local authority website

Cambridgeshire is among the worst counties in England for discussing innovative recycling solutions on websites, a new report shows.

In particular, Cambridgeshire County Council came third worst in the entire country for mentions on its’ own website about recycling.

In the new report published this month by Cartridge Recycling, Cambridgeshire had just 12 mentions of recycling on its website in the last year, compared to Nottinghamshire with more than 900.

Only Essex and Somerset fared worse with just four mentions of recycling innovation each.

The report shows that 27 per cent of people think that their council’s communication on recycling is poor while there is clear differences between regions.

It comes as the UK generated 43.9 million tonnes of commercial and industrial waste (2018), of which 37.2 million tonnes was generated in England, according to the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs.

In 2020/21 local authorities in England dealt with 113 million fly-tipping incidents – an increase of 16 per cent from the 980,000 incidents reported in 2019/20.

The household recycling rate in the United Kingdom has dropped from 45.7 per cent in 2017 to just 43.8 per cent in 2021.

While some of this can be attributed to Covid and lock down, there is pressure on councils to act more stringently on fly-tipping and fly-tippers when caught in the act.

However, much of the fly-tipping that occurs could be avoided if recycling facilities were made more available to residents.

Councillor Nick Sandford recently commented that in his time as a councillor at Peterborough City Council, recycling has dropped considerably from the levels being achieved in 2008, and this in a city that takes pride from calling itself the environmental capital of the country.

In 2008, the city council adopted a policy that aimed to achieve 45 per cent recycling by the year 2020, but the best it ever achieved was 43.3 per cent in 2019, but this dropped below 40 per cent in 2020.

In January, Peterborough City Council having once ranked fifth best in the country for recycling (2008), was rated as 238th in the country.

Cambridgeshire County Council has been approached for comment