Winchester has county's highest recycling rate, councillor claims

Cllr Steve Cramoysan, Lib Dem for The Worthys and Cabinet member for Recycling and Public Protection, made the claim during Full Council on Thursday, August 20.

This was in response to a question from Cllr Angela Clear, Lib Dem for Southwick & Wickham.

Cllr Clear asked: “Now that food waste collections have been fully rolled out across the District, how has this impacted the Council's recycling rate?”

Cllr Cramoysan said the city’s recycling rate is now 47.3 per cent, up from 40.4 per cent in 2024/25 — a rise of about seven percentage points.

He continued: “Another way to look at this is through the lens of residual waste, the weight of the waste collected from our black bins that basically goes to incinerators. So, clearly, we want to get that down as much as possible. In the last four months, or the first four months since food waste collections were fully rolled out, the residual waste tonnage is at a rate of 368 kg per household per year. Now, this compares with the DEFRA numbers for 2024/25 of 439.8kg per household per year. And that’s a reduction of residual waste weight of about 16 per cent of residual waste which is going into incinerators.”

Cllr Steve Cramoysan with dog Luna (Image: Newsquest)

Cllr Clear then asked how Winchester’s rate compared with those of other district councils in the area.

Comparing this to “the league table”, Cllr Cramoysan said that official comparisons “lag by nearly a year”.

He continued: “DEFRA’s latest figures were published in February 2026, and that covers the year to April 2025. Now in that period Winchester recycled 40.4 per cent compared with the best two others of Rushmore at 42.8 per cent and Eastleigh at 43.1 per cent.

However, both of those authorities were already collecting food waste whereas Winchester was not. So Winchester's current recycling rate, now with food waste collections, is now at 47.3 per cent which is, as I said, seven percentage points higher than previously and about 4.5% percentage points better than Eastleigh or Rushmore were.”

He continued: “Although there are not yet comparable up to date figures from FEDRA for every single Hampshire Authority, the council is confident that Winchester is now running as a recycling rate that is higher than all the other collection authorities in Hampshire. And if we’d done the comparisons using residual waste as the measure, the margin would be even better.”