Environment Secretary Margaret Beckett confirmed that England has successfully met and exceeded its target to recycle and compost 17 per cent of household waste during 2003/4.

The Government‘‘s Municipal Waste Management Statistics show that householders in England are now recycling and composting nearly 18% (17.7%) of their household waste, up 3.2% from 14.5% in 2002/03 and from 7.5% in 1996/97.

Mrs Beckett confirmed that it is the first time that such a target has ever been met by the English. "England is making excellent progress on recycling, but we must not be complacent - we must now work towards our more ambitious national target of recycling and composting a quarter of household waste by 2005/06. "We are making it easier for people to recycle, for example by working with supermarkets on front-of-store recycling - and we are committed to extend kerbside collection of at least two types of recyclable materials to all households in England by 2010. We are also funding pilots into incentive schemes for household recycling."

Other key trends highlighted by today‘‘s report include:

· For the first time, a 1.0% reduction in the total amount of municipal waste (from 29.4 Mt in 2002/03 to 29.1 Mt in 2003/04)
· Another first in recent years, a 2% reduction in the amount of household waste collected per person per year (down from 520kg in 2002/03 to 510kg in 2003/04)
· For the second year in a row a further reduction in the amount and proportion of waste being sent to landfill has been recorded (a reduction from 22.1 Mt in 2002/03 and 20.9 Mt in 2003/04)
· Kerbside collection schemes are growing in popularity, waste collected for recycling in this way increased by 50% in 2003/04. Almost all authorities now collect some waste for recycling through kerbside schemes
· ‘‘Bring‘‘ sites, such as bottle banks, and civic amenity sites continue to be a popular way to recycle waste - 58% of all waste that was recycled was collected via these sites.

As well as presenting the national picture, today‘‘s figures show that there are significant variations in household recycling rates between different regions. The highest recycling regions were the East (23.2%) and the South East (22.7%). Despite recording the lowest rate at 11.9%, recycling of household waste in the North East is growing faster than anywhere else in England with Householders in the region recycling 80% more waste during 2003/04 than they did in 2002/03