DEVON County Council recycled more than 63,000 tonnes of materials in a year through its household waste recycling centres – the equivalent of about 30,000 family cars.

The county’s 19 centres received 80,421 tonnes of recyclable material and disposable waste in the last financial year, 78 per cent of which was recycled.

A spokesperson for the council said that the tonnage of recycling was reported to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).

“Once a load delivered to a reprocessor/recycler is agreed as being acceptable for inclusion in a recycling process, the tonnage is recorded at that point,” the spokesperson said.

“There will always be some elements in the various recycling streams that are removed during the recycling process (e.g. plastic bags in garden waste or Sellotape on cardboard) but this is not counted in the Defra agreed recording process.”

The data, requested by the Local Democracy Reporting Service, shows how much of each material is recycled.

Garden waste tops the list at more than 21,000 tonnes, while wood and timber was the second most recycled material at 11,772 tonnes.

The council said its recycling rate hit almost 55 per cent for the 2023/24 financial year.

This figure, which also includes kerbside recycling as well as its recycling centres, is up half a per cent on the previous year and means the county has the second highest recycling rate in the country.

Kerbside recycling is collected by Devon’s eight district councils, and the recycling data also includes Torbay.

East Devon has a 60 per cent recycling rate, making it the sixth-highest performing waste collection authority (WCA) in England, narrowly behind top-performer South Oxfordshire (62 per cent).

Exeter City Council was the eighth highest for the least amount of household waste collected per person.

Cllr Roger Croad, Devon County Council’s cabinet member responsible for overseeing waste services cheered the figures, but said the authority would still look to improve.

“I think we can do even better, and I want to remind the public of the importance of ensuring that they separate out their waste for both their kerbside collections and when they visit a recycling centre ensuring that all metal is placed in the metal skip  for instance,” he said.

“The less residual waste we have the higher our recycling rates will be, and the lower our costs.”

Bradley Gerrard