Recycling rise in Waltham Forest

Waltham Forest residents have been recycling right with data showing an increase in recycling tonnages and a decrease in refuse tonnages from summer 2024 to 2025.

In March 2025, in an attempt to increase recycling rates, Waltham Forest Council moved from weekly to fortnightly black bin (residual waste) collections.

The idea behind it was to encourage residents to rethink their recycling behaviours and use their household bins more efficiently to waste less and recycle more, as around 85 per cent of all household waste can be recycled in either your food waste caddy or in your green or brown wheelie bin.

Comparing the data from the first two quarters (April to June and July to September) in 2024 and 2025, Waltham Forest residents are now recycling much more.

There has been an increase of over 13.5 per cent in dry recycling, 19.3 per cent in food waste recycling and 21.6 per cent in garden waste recycling, from 2024 to 2025. Meanwhile, refuse (household waste) reduced by nearly 14 per cent.

In addition, we have seen success stories in additional item recycling, including:

• 382,600 blister packs were recycled after the introduction of the new scheme
• nearly 30 tonnes of textiles were recycled
• almost 600kg of coffee cups recycled
• over 7 tonnes of batteries were recycled
• 97 bikes recycled to date

Cllr Clyde Loakes, Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Climate and Air Quality, said:

Recycling tonnages are up significantly and refuse tonnages down by 14 per cent on last year, what a fantastic achievement! I want to say a huge ‘thank you’ to all our residents for working with us to achieve this massive improvement.

It’s a clear sign that the move from weekly to fortnightly black bin collections is working. We wanted to get our recycling rates up and these latest figures are promising –we are now pushing towards a massive 40 per cent recycling rate this year.

While these results are encouraging, we know there is more work to do, and we all have to play our part to recycle more, recycle right, and lead the way to becoming a net zero borough by 2030.