Bosses confident Doncaster Council can meet Government target on recycled waste

In 2016-2017, the council recycled or composted 78,253 tonnes of all waste, about 47.3 per cent of the overall collected, according to data from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

The data includes the rubbish made up of everyday items that are disposed of by the public at home or on the go.

These figures are better than two years ago, when 40.8 per cent of the rubbish was recycled.

Doncaster Council bosses have said they are confident they will reach the target after entering their new waste collection contract. England recycled on average 42.7 per cent of the waste produced over the last year.

Incineration plants burnt 30 per cent of the rubbish produced in the council. The vast majority of it was sent to specialist Energy-from-Waste (EfW) power plants as fuel to generate heat and electricity.

Doncaster sent 13,211 tonnes of waste to landfills in 2016-2017 - about eight per cent of the total.

The Government aims to cut to 35 per cent the proportion of rubbish going to landfill by 2020.

Lee Garrett, head of service for waste and highways infrastructure, said: “We recently entered into a new waste contract which includes new household waste and recycling collection methods to increase our recycling rates so we consistently exceed the government’s 50 per cent target.

"Households now have a far easier way to recycle their waste and have extra capacity for their recyclable items using their blue bin, green box and green bin.

"Early figures show these changes are paying dividends as we are seeing an increase in recycling volumes across the borough. We are on track to hit the government’s 2020 recycling target.”