Each year in Cumbria we throw away 350,000 tonnes of domestic waste. That equates to 136 bin bags full for each household. That's a lot of rubbish! In fact, Cumbria households produce more waste per head than any other county. But that's the bad news. The good news is that we can actually recycle over four-fifths of this.

The waste we create can be broken down into the following elements:
38% Garden and kitchen waste
19% Paper
10% Plastic
8% Glass
5% Card
3% Metal
3% Textiles
14% Miscellaneous

So there's plenty of scope to recycle most of the waste we produce and as a county we are all working hard to make sure that we do.

Last year in Cumbria we recycled 36,718 tonnes of garden waste, 12,240 tonnes of paper, 7,240 tonnes of glass and 549 tonnes of cans. That's 56,747 tonnes of waste we collectively diverted from our landfill sites. A good effort no doubt but that's still only 17% so we've still got some way to go.