“With your help, we’re finding new ways to manage 350,000 tonnes of waste each year in Lincolnshire”, says the county council.

Lincolnshire households throw away around 350,000 tonnes of waste every year – that’s enough to fill Lincoln Cathedral six times over.

Managing all this waste is a mammoth operation. More than 130 bin lorries from Lincolnshire’s seven district councils collect bins from over 350,000 homes and businesses and pass this to the county council for disposal.

The county council also operates 11 Household Waste Recycling Centres where residents can bring their own waste and recycling, and get rid of larger items and electricals.

Of all that waste, around 40% is recycled or composted, and over 59% is sent to our energy from waste plant in North Hykeham to be turned into electricity. The remaining 0.5% is sent to landfill.

This is a significant reduction from last year, when 3% of the county’s waste was sent to landfill.

Progress is purple-lidded

Across East and West Lindsey, North and South Kesteven and Boston, over 200,000 households with purple-lidded bins are helping to increase the quality of Lincolnshire’s recycling.

Since introducing the separate bins for paper and cardboard, we’ve collected 15,000 tonnes of high-quality paper products that are sent to a processing plant, where it is pulped, washed and pressed, becoming newspaper in as little as a week.

Alongside the rollout of the purple-lidded bins, residents have worked hard to put only the right things in their other bins too. In those five districts, on average more than 90% of the items in the mixed recycling bins are exactly the materials we’re looking for – a figure which is up from around 65% prior to the rollout.

Food for thought

Last year the Government announced that councils had to introduce weekly food waste collections before the end of March 2026.

It’s estimated that households in Lincolnshire throw away between 30,000 and 35,000 tonnes of food every year. All that food is currently sent to our energy from waste plant; if it were recycled instead it would boost Lincolnshire’s recycling rate by 7%.

Expect to see more details about how and when food waste collections will be introduced in your area in the coming months. Meanwhile, find tips for making the most of the food you buy at www.lovefoodhatewaste.com

Reduce, reuse, recycle

Although recycling is a good thing, there are two more environmentally friendly ways to manage our waste: reducing the amount we create, and reusing it as many times as possible.

The amount of waste produced per household in Lincolnshire has fallen over the last few years, and we’d love to hear your tips about how you are reducing how much you throw away. Email your ideas to LCCwasteofficers@lincolnshire.gov.uk.

Find out more about recycling in Lincolnshire at www.lincolnshire.gov.uk/waste.

Published: 8th August 2024