Hertfordshire has recorded its highest-ever recycling rate during 2019-20.

The Hertfordshire Waste Partnership recycling rate for the year rose to 52.3 per cent, a rise of 0.6 per cent on the previous year.

A meeting of the county's Community Safety and Waste Management Cabinet Panel heard it was the highest ever recorded rate including reuse, recycling and composting.

The HWP annual report for 2019/20 was presented to the panel on February 9, by Marc Wilcox, graduate management trainee. It stated there was an increase in recycling rates for nine of the county council's 11 partner authorities with only a 0.5 per cent decrease in the remaining two partners.

Mr Wilcox said: "Interestingly, although the recycling rates increased we did see a decrease in the landfill diversion rate. There was a drop of 0.9 per cent from 2018/19 to 2019/20.

"This was in part due to the temporary closure of Edmonton ERF. Unexpected, although it did lead to an increase of 4,798 tonnes of waste going to landfill that year.

"It's not all bad news though with regard to landfill waste. There was a drop in the overall tonnage of household waste across the county which is great.

"That was seen in every district and, on average, there was a 16 kilograme reduction in waste overall per household.

"If we look at residual waste, we can see the average per household was 411 kilogrammes per household. And we saw a reduction of nine kilos from the previous year. That equates to a 4,720 tonne reduction across the county for the year, which equates to a £523,000 saving for the partnership.

"What makes all of those figures a bit more impressive as well, is that we saw roughly 4,400 new homes being built in the year as well."

The report gave an update on the WasteAware 'Refill Hertfordshire' campaign which was launched in 2019. It aims to encourage public-facing businesses to register as a refill station where the pubic can refill their reusable water bottle for free.

By refilling a reusable water bottle rather than buying single plastic bottles, the use of 7.7 billion bottles could be avoided each year in the UK. There are now 350 refill stations registered througout Hertfordshire.

The Hertfordshire Fly Tipping Group has continued to expand to deliver its #SCRAPflytipping campaign and expand the number of local authorities using the campaign toolkit. 102 local authorities are now using campaign materials with 100 more in dialogue with the FTG about joining.

The second lowest number of fly tipping incidents was recorded since April 2012 during 2019/20. This was an 11.7 per cent reduction since 2018/19.

A total of 123 Section 33(Fly Tipping) Fixed Penalty Notices were issued, the highest recorded number. There were 59 of the new Section 34 (Duty of Care) FPNs issued along with 34 prosecutions for fly tipping.

Mr Wilcox added that no recyclables were going to China due to a change in the east Asia markets which is expected to remain. He said it underlined the need for a strong sustainable domestic market.

Panel chairman, councillor Terry Hone, said: "While some of those numbers do look very good, I think there's been changes in the way in which people are working from home perhaps, flytipping, etc which will impact on the 2020/21 report.

"Also there's some new programmes that people are putting in but that does give us detail of what's happened in 2019/20 and what the partnership has been up to which is excellent work in areas where we know people have issues. I use flytipping as a good example."