Recycling has decreased 3.8 percentage points in the waste authority for Plymouth

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

Back in 2015 Plymouth City Council recycled 37.8% of its waste, landfilled 62.2%, and incinerated 0%.

By 2023 incineration had increased by 66.1 percentage points to 66.1%.

Recycling decreased over the same period by 3.8 percentage points to 33.9%. In 2023 0.1% of waste was landfilled.

The waste authority for Plymouth is South West Devon Waste Partnership. There are currently 15 years left on a contract with MVV Environment. The total contract value is £436m. The contract has a clawback arrangement: “The contract contains a mechanism for sharing Third Party Income associated with the Devonport EfW Facility. The details regarding the Third Party Income of the contract is deemed 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 South West

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