Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how much and what proportion of waste was rejected by materials recycling facilities in each of the last three years; and for what reasons that waste was so rejected.

An estimate of recycling rejects for all local authority collected waste is reported as part of the annual England local authority waste statistics which are published within the datasets (Table 3b for All Local Authority Waste) at: www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/env18-local-authority-collected-waste-annual-results-tables.

Data on the rejection of waste at materials recycling facilities (MRF) is not specifically collated and published, so is not readily available. The estimate of all recycling rejections for the last three years is summarised in the table below and will include any rejections recorded at the point of collection, at the MRF or at the gate of the reprocessor.

The reasons for the rejection of waste are not recorded by the local authorities.