Harry Rosehill

This Interactive Map Shows How Good Your Borough Is At Recycling

Photo: Shutterstock

Did you remember to put the recycling out last night?

If you didn't — face it, we've all been there — you could be contributing to the poor performance of your borough's recycling rate. And if you're that religious recycler, scrubbing bits of plastic clean before carefully placing them in the recycling, then pat your self on the back for dragging your borough's rates up.

So which boroughs are the best at recycling? And which are the worst? Take a look at the map below — courtesy of InSinkErator.

And the winner is... Bexley!

Bexley held onto its crown for a few years running now, it was similarly ahead of the pack in 2015/16. However second placed Bromley is closing the gap, from a 5.7% percentage difference back then, to a 2.1% one now.

And now for the loser... Newham. Impressively it's become worse at recycling in the past two years, falling from 14.7% to 14.1%.

There looks to be a touch of the familiar London 'doughnut' to this map. We've seen it before across various data sets, most recognisably voting patterns. Lots of the boroughs with better recycling rates have either Conservative or Lib Dem councils. While this can't be put down to pure coincidence — councils play a large role in residents recycling — it also shouldn't be overstated.

Voting for a Tory council doesn't guarantee high recycling rates — just look at second bottom placed Conservative led Westminster.

Your borough might be doing well compared to Newham, but looking at England as a whole, London performs miserably. Its recycling rates are the worst out of any English region. And it can't just be blamed on a few outliers either. If we look at the median performing London borough Haringey, its 32.9% recycling rate still pales in comparison to various other parts of the country.

So overall London is still rubbish with rubbish. That's something to bear in mind on Monday 18 March, Global Recycling Day. Must do better, people.