Environment Minister Alex Attwood today welcomed figures which showed an eight per cent drop in household waste and a 0.6 percentage point increase in household recycling.

Household waste for the spring quarter was 209,196 tonnes, an eight per cent drop compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period there was a small increase (c 2%) in the tonnage of household waste recycled but household waste composted dropped significantly (c 14%), possibly due to the poor weather. The combination of these opposing factors still led to an increase of 0.6 percentage points in the household recycling & composting rate to 42.2%, the improvement of which is one of the key commitments of the Executive's Programme for Government 2011-15.

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Only 53.4% of all household waste collected by the Councils was landfilled, a drop of 2.7 percentage points compared to the same period last year.

Commenting on the reduction Alex Attwood said: "The continued decreases in both waste generated by householders and that landfilled by the Councils can only improve both our environmental and financial performance. It can send out the message that this part of the world has great clean credentials and that we should aim to be a world leader in carbon reduction."

(CD)