Two thirds of household waste down in the dumps

Sixty three point six per cent of municipal waste in the North West Region Waste Management Group (NWRWMG) - which includes the Londonderry, Limavady and Strabane areas - ended up being dumped in landfill sites between April and June, according to provision estimates by the Department of the Environment (DoE).

The vast majority of waste collected across the NWRWMG area between April and June was generated by domestic householders with just 3,490 tonnes of 35,434 tonnes of rubbish generated from non domestic sources.

Sixty two point six per cent of household waste ended up down in the dumps during the quarter. Each man, woman and child generated about 139 kilogrammes of household rubbish each in the NWRWMG area during the period in question.

This was higher than the 133 kilogrammes per person in the Belfast centred Arc 21 area and the 127 kilogrammes per person in the southern SWaMP 2008 area.

In NWRWMG 21.6 per cent (19,350 tonnes) of Biodegradable Municipal Waste (BMW) was landfilled during the quarter.

The percentage of municipal waste sent to landfill across Northern Ireland in the quarter was 61.7 per cent. This was 1.9 percentage points lower compared to that for April - June 2009 (63.6 per cent).

Northern Ireland has an allocation of 469,937 tonnes of biodegradable municipal waste that can be sent to landfill in 2010/11. In the period April to June 2010, a total of 91,341 tonnes of biodegradable waste were sent to landfill, which equates to just over 19% of the annual allocation