Eunomia’s Local Authority Recycling Carbon Index is an alternative measure of the environmental performance of councils’ waste and recycling services.
The Carbon Index supplements statistics on recycling rates by showing the CO2e savings that result from councils’ recycling efforts, giving a greater insight into the wider environmental performance of councils’ waste management services.
Eunomia’s 2012/13 Carbon Index report shows a 3% decrease in the amount of CO2 equivalent (CO2e) emissions saved through local authority recycling in England and Wales compared with the previous year. Northern Ireland’s performance has improved by one per cent.
The reduced benefit comes despite a small rise of 0.2% in recycling rate in England over the same period, and is caused by a marked decline in the amount of textiles and metal collected. These materials have high levels of embodied carbon and energy and the fall in their captures outweighs the gains from increased recycling of food and plastics.
The reduction in the carbon benefit from municipal recycling sheds new light on the implications of the plateauing of raw recycling rate performance for England at around 43% in recent years. The European Commission has recommended that the statutory recycling rate for municipal waste should rise to 70% by 2030, but under current policies the CO2e performance of recycling schemes in England appears to be moving in the wrong direction.
Despite the overall decrease, some authorities managed to achieve significant improvements in their results. The top performers in England in 2012/13 were Cheshire West and Chester, moving just ahead of last year’s leaders, North Somerset. In Wales, Powys achieved the highest saving. These three have the distinction of being the only councils covered by the index that saved more than 100kg of CO2e per person within their area. This is achieved without the authorities being top performers on recycling rates.
| CO2e Saved (kg per person) 2011/12 | CO2e Saved (kg per person) 2012/13 | Recycling Rate 2012/13 | |
| Cheshire West and Chester | 98 | 105 | 56.1% |
| North Somerset | 111 | 104 | 58.4% |
| Powys | 86 | 102 | 50.9% |
| Ceredigion | 102 | 99 | 53.6% |
| Isle of Anglesey | 102 | 96 | 55.2% |
| Somerset | 96 | 96 | 50.3% |
Many of the authorities achieving the lowest CO2e savings are in inner cities, especially Central London.
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