Wales Posts Another Increase in Recycling

Wales has once again demonstrated strong momentum in recycling performance, with the latest official data showing that the local authority municipal waste recycling rate climbed from 66.6% in 2023 to 2024 to 68.4%  percent in 2024 to 2025. This represents a sustained upward trajectory and reflects one of the largest year-on-year improvements in almost a decade.

The Welsh Government’s January 2026 announcement confirms that this latest recycling rate brings Wales close to the statutory 70% recycling target, with over half of Welsh local authorities now meeting or exceeding that benchmark.

These headline figures are the result of decades of system change. Wales has transformed its recycling approach since devolution, growing from recycling around 5% of municipal waste in the late 1990s to operating one of the most effective recycling systems in the world today.

However, as Wales edges closer to the top global position, attention increasingly turns to the question of what comes next. How can Wales move from high recycling rates to genuine circularity, and what role does advanced infrastructure play in achieving that ambition?

Beyond Recycling: Setting the Strategic Direction

The Welsh Government’s Beyond Recycling strategy, published in 2021, provides the long-term framework for this next phase. The strategy shifts focus away from recycling alone and towards a Circular Economy model where resources are kept in use for as long as possible, waste is designed out of systems, and material value is retained within Wales.

Key objectives of the strategy include preventing waste at source, expanding reuse and repair, and investing in the infrastructure required to manage increasingly complex material streams. Importantly, the strategy recognises that achieving world-leading recycling performance must also deliver economic and social value, supporting decarbonisation, green jobs and resilient supply chains.

Latest Wales Recycling Statistics: What the Data Tells Us

The most recent Wales recycling statistics provide several important insights for the industry.

The headline figure shows a recycling rate of 68.4%, up from 66.6% percent the previous year. This is the largest annual increase since 2015 to 2016 and indicates renewed momentum following several years of flatter performance.

The data also highlights the impact of new workplace recycling regulations. Over 8,000 tonnes of additional recyclable materials were collected from workplaces, while residual waste from workplaces fell by almost 16%. This demonstrates that separating materials at source, when supported by appropriate systems, can deliver measurable results.

Landfill use in Wales has now fallen to just 0.7% of waste arisings, a remarkable shift from the position prior to devolution when landfill was the dominant disposal route. More than 90% of local authorities recorded year-on-year improvements, reinforcing the consistency of progress across the country.

Collectively, these figures confirm Wales’s position as one of the top-performing recycling nations globally, currently ranked second in the world.

The Role of Infrastructure in Achieving Further Progress

As recycling rates increase, the challenge becomes more complex rather than less. Higher-performance systems require infrastructure that can handle a broader range of materials, deliver higher-quality outputs, and adapt to evolving policy and collection models.

This is where advanced Resource Recovery Facilities play a decisive role.

CWM Environmental’s Resource Recovery Facility, currently entering the final stages of development, represents the type of infrastructure required to support the next stage of Circular Economy Wales. The RRF is due to open in the spring of 2026.

The facility is being designed to process up to 80,000 tonnes of material per year, using a combination of modern separation technologies to maximise recovery rates and material quality. These include near-infrared optical sorting, ballistic separation, eddy-current and magnetic systems, and film extraction and automated handling.

The focus is on quality. Producing clean, consistent material streams is essential if recyclates are to re-enter manufacturing supply chains and displace virgin materials. Facilities such as the RRF help ensure that materials collected through household and workplace systems are fully utilised rather than lost through contamination or downcycling.

Supporting Policy Delivery and System Resilience

The RRF has been designed with future policy alignment in mind. It supports the Welsh Government’s collections blueprint and provides flexibility to adapt to evolving collection requirements over time.

This adaptability is increasingly important as Wales continues to refine its recycling system, particularly as new materials enter the waste stream and as producer responsibility reforms reshape the economics of recycling.

Advanced facilities provide resilience within the system. They allow Wales to process material domestically, reduce reliance on export markets and retain greater economic value within the country. This aligns directly with the objectives set out in the Beyond Recycling strategy.

From Recycling to Circular Value Creation

Resource recovery infrastructure also plays a broader role in enabling Circular Economy outcomes beyond recycling alone.

The RRF forms part of the wider CWM Gwyrdd vision, which brings together renewable energy, reuse, manufacturing, research and education within a single integrated site. This approach reflects the reality that circular economy systems function best when material recovery is directly linked to reuse, remanufacturing, and local market development.

By co-locating facilities and supporting innovation, sites such as Nantycaws help create the conditions for recovered materials to be turned into new products within Wales. This supports economic development, skills growth and decarbonisation while reducing dependence on external supply chains.

Industry Collaboration and Shared Responsibility

Delivering infrastructure of this scale requires collaboration across the public and private sectors. The development of the RRF has involved partners from engineering, construction, technology and operations, demonstrating the collective effort required to deliver modern Circular Economy infrastructure.

This mirrors the wider lesson from Wales’s recycling success. Progress is driven not by a single actor but by alignment across government, industry and communities. As recycling systems mature, this collaboration becomes even more important.

Challenges Ahead

While Wales’s recycling performance continues to strengthen, the data also highlights a set of structural challenges that must be addressed if progress is to be sustained and accelerated. As recycling rates increase and material capture improves, the volume and complexity of recovered materials continue to grow year on year. This places increasing pressure on downstream markets and processing infrastructure.

Three areas in particular present ongoing challenges within Wales: Soft Plastics reprocessing capacity, Textile reuse and recycling, and the treatment of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) and Metals.

Plastics remain one of the most volatile material streams. While collection systems have improved significantly, global plastics markets are subject to price instability, fluctuating demand and inconsistent end market specifications. Without sufficient domestic reprocessing capacity, Wales remains exposed to market shocks that can undermine the value of collected plastics and limit opportunities to retain material within the Welsh economy.

Textiles present a different but equally pressing challenge. The volume of textile waste continues to rise, driven by fast fashion and changing consumption patterns. Although reuse remains the preferred option, the proportion of textiles unsuitable for direct reuse is growing. At present, Wales has limited dedicated infrastructure to process lower-grade textiles into new products or materials, meaning significant quantities are exported or lost from the circular system altogether.

WEEE is another rapidly expanding waste stream. As product lifecycles shorten and technology adoption accelerates, the quantity of electrical and electronic waste continues to increase. WEEE contains valuable and critical materials, but it also requires specialist treatment and processing infrastructure. The current lack of sufficient domestic capacity in Wales risks both material loss and missed economic opportunity.

Metals recycling also presents a growing challenge. Across the UK, a number of metal recyclers have recently reduced operations or exited the market altogether, driven by a combination of high energy costs, volatile commodity prices, rising compliance burdens and tight margins. While metals remain highly recyclable and strategically important to the Circular Economy, current market conditions are putting pressure on domestic processing capacity. Without sufficient support and investment, there is a risk that valuable ferrous and non-ferrous materials continue to be exported or lost from the UK value chain. Strengthening metals recycling infrastructure in Wales would help improve material security, retain economic value locally and ensure the sector remains resilient as demand for secondary metals continues to grow.

Facilities such as CWM Environmental’s Resource Recovery Facility demonstrate how targeted infrastructure investment can strengthen system resilience. However, addressing plastics, textiles and WEEE at scale will require a coordinated programme of further development across Wales.

There is a clear opportunity for the Welsh Government to build on its global leadership by fast-tracking investment into these critical infrastructure areas, ensuring that recovered materials can be processed domestically and reintroduced into Welsh supply chains. Doing so would reduce reliance on export markets, support green jobs, improve material security and reinforce the objectives set out in the Beyond Recycling strategy.

Wales’s latest recycling performance demonstrates strong progress, but sustaining this momentum will depend on timely investment and collaboration to address growing material challenges. Aligning policy, infrastructure and industry capability will be key to advancing Wales’s circular economy ambitions.