England's households are recycling more rubbish as official figures show recycle rates have broken through the 40 percent barrier for the first time.
Provisional data released by Defra today reveals a year-on-year increase from 38.3% to 40.1%.
The figures, which are based on data submitted by councils to the government's Waste DataFlow database, also shows a continued decrease in the overall amount of household waste generated, which fell by 0.3% between the year April 2009-March 2010 and July 2009-June 2010 to 23.6 million tonnes.
It also saw the continuation of a four-year trend involving a fall in the amount of household waste generated per person to 456 kilograms per person, of which 182kg was recycling, composted or reused, while 273kg was not.
The tonnage of local authority collected waste being sent to landfill by local authorities has decreased by 2.3 per cent between the financial year 2009/10 and the year July 2009 to June 2010 to 12.2 million tonnes.
The total amount of local authority collected waste generated has decreased by 0.3 per cent to 26.5 million tonnes in the year July 2009 to June 2010. The average annual change in local authority collected waste over the previous five years to 2009/10 was a decrease of 2.2 per cent.
The proportion of local authority collected waste disposed of into landfill has decreased to 46.1 per cent in the year July 2009 to June 2010. Over the last 10 years local authority collected waste sent to landfill has decreased from 79.0 per cent in 2000/01 to 47.0 per cent in 2009/10.
Following the release of the encouraging set of statistics, Becky Slater, waste campaigner for Friends of the Earth, said: "The spectacular growth in recycling over the last 10 years has helped Britain save cash, tackle climate change and create thousands of new jobs.
"People around the UK are keen to get even more rubbish out of their bins - and we're all frustrated by unnecessary packaging and having to bin stuff that councils don't recycle.
"The Government should make more recycling possible in our homes and workplaces, and aim to halve the rubbish that has to go into our black bin bags by 2020."
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