UK’s Top 20 Plastic Recycling Towns and Cities

The Body Shop was interested to find out how much the UK is recycling – as the beauty brand does its part to reduce plastic waste with a new in-store Return.Recycle.Repeat scheme

• Wigan tops the list as the number one place in the UK for plastic recycling
• Six Welsh towns and cities make it into the top 20 list, just missing out with the top spot
• Yorkshire boasts four top recycling places, with Barnsley, Hull and Rotherham making it on the list

Image source: Unsplash

Plastic pollution is one of the biggest environmental concerns of our generation, and the UK has made huge progress with 602,493 tonnes of plastic recycled between 2017 and 2018. A YouGov¹ survey highlighted that 46% of Brits feel guilty about the amount of plastic they use and 82% of the surveyed are actively trying to reduce the amount they throw away. The Body Shop’s two new plastic initiatives Return.Recycle.Repeat and Community Trade recycled plastic are part of a bigger goal to become a more sustainable brand with recycling being one of the first steps. By 2030, The Body Shop will only be using three types of plastic instead of 20, making it easier for our consumers to recycle its products. Also, with Return. Recycle. Repeat. and other schemes, The Body Shop will collect 25% more packaging than it sells. This is not only great for the environmental footprint that packaging has – it also increases the pool of recycled materials for other industries to use.

With these initiatives in mind, The Body Shop was interested to see the positive impact of people’s current plastic recycling efforts across the UK. The information was compiled by analysing the amount of plastic sent for recycling from every town and city in the UK between 2017 and 2018² and cross referencing this with the population³ to create a plastic recycling index.

Based on this index, the north-west town of Wigan has been named as the top plastic recycling town in the UK with over 9,000 tons of plastic being sent for recycling between 2017-18.

Interestingly, it’s Wales that leads the UK with the most towns and cities making the top 20 list and two (Bridgend and Swansea) making the top three. In total the Welsh sent 43,877 tonnes of plastic for recycling between 2017-2018 which weighs 3.5 times more than the Severn Bridge.

With over 2,000 tonnes of plastic recycled, Derry is showed to be the best place in Northern Ireland for plastic recycling, coming fifth in the whole of the UK. Northern Ireland contributed 26,033 tonnes between 2017 and 2018, which could build the Albert Memorial Clock 13 times, dwarfing the treasured landmark.

Two Scottish places made the top 20 with Stirling placing seventh and Falkirk sneaking in at 19^th. Combined these two places recycled over 3,500 tonnes of plastic. Yorkshire also did well, boasting four of the top 20 towns and cities for plastic recycling – Hull, Barnsley, Middlesbrough and Rotherham.

The full top 20 places are revealed below: 

To show how well the UK has done with plastic recycling, The Body Shop has visualised regional plastic recycling between April 2017 and March 2018 in comparison to the weight  beloved UK landmarks. You can see more information about the campaign here: https://www.thebodyshop.com/en-gb/packaging/plastic-recycling-uk

¹ YouGov study:  https://yougov.co.uk/topics/consumer/articles-reports/2019/04/19/most-brits-support-ban-harmful-plastic-packaging

² Amount of plastic sent to be recycled for every council in the England, Northern Ireland and Wales during April 2017 – March 2018, and the amount of plastic sent to be recycled for every council in Scotland between January 2017 – December 2017: wastedataflow.org

³ Population data taken from the Office of National Statistics between 2017 for each town and city. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates/datasets/populationestimatesforukenglandandwalesscotlandandnorthernireland

Other sources include: Department for Environment Food & Rural Affairs, Scottish Environment Protection Agency, ONS and Statista.