Lewisham's recycling rate plummets

6.06.44pm BST (GMT +0100) Sat 15th Aug 2009

Councillors Pete Pattisson and Chris Maines want to see Lewisham improving its recycling rate

Latest figures from Lewisham Council show that the amount of waste each household is producing has risen and the amount they recycle has fallen. The figures have been exposed by Liberal Democrat councillor Chris Maines.

"I am shocked to see our already low recycling rate fell by 25% during April. The Council is clearly failing in its aim to reduce waste and increase recycling," said Cllr Chris Maines.

The Labour-run Council, which incinerates 70% of its waste, has been set targets to reduce the amount of residual household waste produced to 62.83Kg per household. In fact it increased to 70.36 Kg in April. It aims to recycle 23% of household waste and this fell to 14.26% during April, the last month for which figures are available.

"The Labour Council already had one of the worst recycling rates in the country so to discover that they have in fact been doing even worse than they publicly claimed is shocking," said Cllr Maines. "The recycling rates now appear to be falling through the floor."

The figures reveal that recycling rates in the borough are less than 15% after the Council discovered "a discrepancy in the percentage of waste the contractor said they were recycling, which had a negative effect on both our recycling rate and the percentage of waste that was sent to landfill."

Chris Maines commented, "The public appreciate that we are facing a serious environmental crisis. They are willing the Council to get its act together and yet Labour's hapless Mayor appears to be clueless about how to tackle the problem. Elsewhere in London and around England councils are successfully achieving twice the recycling rates of Lewisham. It just seems to get worse in Lewisham."