[time4tea]

You need to be a bit careful about these figures. There can be a big difference between the percentage that is collected and given to a "recycling" company, and the percentage that is a tually recycled. Councils are usually bound to report the former, not the latter. So a council that got its residents to carefully separate the waste, collected it, and then gave it to a recycling company that put it all in a skip and tossed it in a landfill in Nigeria would still get a great recycling percentage.

[nickspicer1993]

Yes to clarify this is explicitly the percentage before being sent to "reprocessors", however here is a breakdown of Bristol council: https://www.bristol.gov.uk/residents/bins-and-recycling/what...

It's a shame that they do not link to the direct companies so you can trace the waste to completion but it looks like a good deal of it is not getting shipped outside of the UK.

I believe there are a couple of bills being proposed to also stop this practice completely, although I don't know how effective they will be.