Merthyr Tydfil County Borough Council has been named as the best recycler in the UK in terms of the amount of greenhouse gas emissions it has saved.
The council has topped the Eunomia Recycling Carbon Index for managing to save 117kg of CO2 per person through changes to its collection services. This includes reducing the size of its residual waste bins in 2015 and switching to multi-stream collections with separate food waste.
The The Index found that council recycling schemes have saved just over four million tonnes of CO2 emissions in 2017/18.
The Eunomia principal consultant, Peter Jones, said: ‘Merthyr Tydfil’s performance improvement in the last year is considerable, and it’s a testament to the hard work of the council and local residents that it’s leading to such substantial environmental benefits.
The ‘Welsh authorities have led the Carbon Index for several years, thanks to the challenging targets set by the Welsh Government and the support it has provided to councils.’
The England and Wales saw small decreases in their emissions performance, with average CO2 savings per person dropping by 0.7kg and 0.2 kg according to the Index.
