The overall rate for waste from UK households fell by just 0.1 percentage points to 44.5 per cent in 2024, according to newly published statistics from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).
Wales recorded the highest household recycling rate among the four UK nations at 58.6 per cent, followed by Northern Ireland at 50.1 per cent, England at 43.8 per cent and Scotland at 42.7 per cent.
Scotland’s rate increased from 42.2 per cent in 2023, while Wales rose from 57 per cent. England’s rate fell from 44 per cent and Northern Ireland’s from 50.2 per cent.
The UK Government had previously set a household recycling target of 50 per cent for 2020, but this measure was subsequently replaced by targets covering municipal waste.
Digital tracking
The UK is now aiming for a municipal waste recycling rate of 60 per cent by 2030, although Defra does not yet publish a UK municipal recycling rate.
Digital waste tracking, due to begin rolling out from October 2026, is expected to help address some existing data gaps.
The amount of waste from UK households increased by 1 per cent to 26.2 million tonnes in 2024, with 11.65 m/t recycled.
UK biodegradable municipal waste sent to landfill fell from 5.3 m/t in 2023 to 4.9 m/t in 2024.
Simpler Recycling
Separate provisional figures for 2025 showed that 70.5 per cent of UK packaging waste was recycled, down from 73.2 per cent in 2024.
The recycling rate for plastics packaging, however, increased from 53.5 per cent in 2024 to 57.3 per cent in 2025. The rate for wood packaging fell from 51.7 per cent to 43.7 per cent, while paper and cardboard fell from 84.1 per cent to 80.3 per cent and glass from 79.1 per cent to 75.1 per cent.
David Gudgeon, head of external affairs at Reconomy, said the 2024 figures predated the introduction of the government’s Simpler Recycling scheme for households in England.
“As this data is from 2024, we would expect the introduction of Simpler Recycling for households this year, whereby local authorities must provide standardised household collections and mandatory separation of food waste from general waste, to contribute towards improving recycling rates,” he said.
‘Improve recycling behaviours’
Gudgeon said the legislation, alongside Extended Producer Responsibility and the UK-wide Deposit Return Scheme, would “help improve recycling behaviours, increase the supply of quality recycled materials and support investment in the infrastructure needed to process them”.
However, he described the delay to mandatory collections of plastics films and flexible packaging until 1 April 2030 as “a setback for UK recycling”, saying businesses had invested in domestic infrastructure in anticipation of more material becoming available for processing.
“To reach the national recycling target of 65 per cent by 2035, businesses need certainty,” he said.
He has also called on the government to publish the Circular Economy Growth Plan for England, originally expected in autumn 2025, and set out a clear roadmap for strengthening domestic markets for recycled materials.
More work is needed
Alexandra French, chief executive of materials technology company Xampla, also highlighted the increase in the plastics packaging recycling rate, but said more work was needed.
“Recycling has an important role to play in tackling plastics waste, and continued investment in collection and recycling infrastructure will be essential to build on this progress,” she said. “However, recycling cannot be the only solution. More than 900,000 tonnes of plastics packaging still went unrecycled last year.”
Separately, an Oxford Economics study published this month found that targeted collection and recycling policies could deliver greater recycling gains than a 5 per cent cap on virgin plastics production.
The study, commissioned by the International Council of Chemical Associations, estimated that targeted policies could increase global recycling by 33.6 m/t, compared with 19.9 m/t under the production cap scenario.
