The amount of waste recycled across Bath and North East Somerset last year has reached its highest level since records began.

Residents are being thanked for their contribution to a Reuse, Recycling and Composting rate of 59.2% for 2020/21. The national figures will soon be published by DEFRA for all local authorities.

The council's green box and blue bag recycling tonnages collected have increased by just under 22% since 2019/20 with 18,381 tonnes collected in 2021.

A total of 8,032 tonnes of food waste was collected last year, an increase of just over 15% on the previous year.

The overall achievement of 59.2% is a 3% increase on the 56.2% rates in the year ending 2020.

There has also been a reduction in the amount of black bag rubbish residual waste each household is producing which has dropped from 389.67kg/hh in 2019/20 to 363.43 kg/hh in 2020/21, although total overall black sack tonnages across the district have increased by 12% to 21,990 tonnes.

With residents recycling much more, less waste is being sent to landfill with only 3% in 2020/21, down from 15% in 2019/20.

Councillor David Wood, cabinet member for Neighbourhood Services, said: "These are fantastic figures which show how committed B&NES residents are to reuse and recycling. Thank you to everyone for their sterling efforts. The UK Climate Change Committee has highlighted that recycling is one of the things that we can all do to support the efforts to tackle the climate emergency and that recycling one tonne of aluminium saves nine tonnes of carbon emissions.

"I'm particularly pleased with the reduction in the waste we send to landfill which has come down considerably to just 3%. We have faced a difficult year logistically with driver shortages which has meant some delays to our usual collection schedule, so it's impressive that the community has pulled together to recycle even more this year. We are doing our best to maintain our service times whilst still facing these shortages, so once again I'd like to thank residents for their patience while our crews do their best."

To make the best use of space in recycling containers and to help crews with efficient collections, residents are asked to:

Sort your green boxes to help speed up the collections (having two boxes helps considerably if you have room to store two) – follow Recycle for Bathnes on Facebook for tips

Wash and squash materials such as plastics to make more space and keep your containers as clean as possible

Things that cannot be collected in recycling:

Black plastic, polystyrene, plastic film or hard plastics such as toys or hangers

Any cardboard should have any plastic, sticky tape and polystyrene removed

Nappies cannot be recycled – do not put them in your green box

Wrapping paper (including Christmas paper)

Find out more about the council's rubbish and recycling services by clicking HERE : the B&NES site