A disastrous Liberal Democrat record has pushed Portsmouth close to the bottom of a national league table comparing recycling rates across England.

The Lib Dem-controlled council ranked 325th out of 343 councils in the percentage of household waste that was recycled. The city recycled just 27.1% of its household waste. Seven councils in England achieved recycling rates of more than 60% and another 70 councils had rates above 50%.

And our household recycling rates are now so bad that the government has stepped in to force the City Council to collect glass items as part of its regular refuse collection.

So if much higher household recycling rates can be achieved elsewhere, why not in Portsmouth? The main reason is that in Portsmouth refuse collection excludes many products that are in daily use in most households in the city.

These include all glass bottles and jars, plastic yoghurt pots, food trays, and milk and juice containers. Many local councils across the country have been collecting these items from doorsteps as part of their routine refuse collection for ten years or more.

What Will Labour Do?

Steph Richards, council candidate for Fratton ward said: “ The Lib Dems have failed to tackle these issues. We desperately need city wide action to improve the amount of recycling we do and also to clean up our streets.”

Recycling data, published by the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs, can be found at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/env18-local-authority-collected-waste-annual-results-tables-202122