Recycling has decreased 2.3 percentage points in the waste authority for Sunderland

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

Back in 2015 Sunderland City Council recycled 31.9% of its waste, landfilled 4.1%, and incinerated 63.8%.

By 2023 incineration had increased by 4.8 percentage points to 68.6%.

Recycling decreased over the same period by 2.3 percentage points to 29.6%. In 2023 0.2% of waste was landfilled.

The waste authority for Sunderland is South Tyne and Wear Waste Management Partnership. There are currently 15 years left on a contract with Suez. The total contract value is £717.51m. The contract has a clawback arrangement: “There is a sharing agreement linked to income from energy if it rises above an agreed limit, but the specific details of this arrangement are confidential.”

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 North East

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