Household waste includes regular household collections, civic amenity site waste, waste collected for recycling/composting and waste from special collections, such as collections of bulky household waste. Where local authorities collect non-household waste (i.e. from a business, school etc.) in the same collection round as household waste, it may not be possible for them to provide an accurate split between the household and non-household waste collected. Non-household waste prepared for reuse/recycled/composted includes local authority collected materials from commercial sources. This includes waste collected by private and voluntary organisations. Local authority municipal waste includes waste collected from household and non-household sources, but excludes abandoned vehicles.
Data collection and calculation
Data on municipal waste was collected using an online reporting system for waste data called 'WasteDataFlow'. In Wales, this is managed by Natural Resources Wales. From 2009-10, an expanded breakdown of materials by type was collected by WDF and this is shown here. There may be some discrepancies in the tables, where the components do not sum up to the totals. These discrepancies are due to rounding.
Annual waste generated (tonnes) by source
2012-13