Recycling has decreased 3 percentage points in the waste authority for Birmingham

Strictly embargoed 0:00 GMT, Tuesday, 15 October 2024

Back in 2015 Birmingham City Council recycled 24.4% of its waste, landfilled 3.8%, and incinerated 68.7%.

By 2023 incineration had increased by 8.7 percentage points to 77.4%.

Recycling decreased over the same period by 3 percentage points to 21.4%. In 2023 1.2% of waste was landfilled.

There are currently 10 years left on a contract with Veolia. The total contract value is £350m. The contract has a clawback arrangement: “The contract with Veolia ES Birmingham Ltd is to operate and maintain the facility and this includes commercial arrangements which cover revenues associated with electricity generation and other associated outputs. They are commercially sensitive.”

Notes:

1. Figures do not always add up to 100% as there is a fourth ‘other’ category.
2. In some cases figures total over 100% as it may include waste from the previous year.
3. Rounding may also lead to some percentage changes being slightly higher or lower than the difference between the two figures: in this situation please check the full spreadsheet for more detailed figures.
4. Some annual returns in Scotland are incomplete comparing 2014 and 2022. This is because, at some authorities, data on incineration was not collected back in 2014. Other authorities have also not submitted an annual return for 2022 in the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) data.

Explore authorities in the West Midlands

The interactive table below shows how waste has been dealt with in authorities in the region between 2014/15 and 2022/23.

Visualised: how waste processing changed between 2014/15 and 2022/23