Renfrewshire households recycled 42.7% of their rubbish last year, a fraction down on the year before, according to new official figures for every council in Scotland.

The 2025 household waste data, published today by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa), shows Renfrewshire produced just over 77,000 tonnes of household waste, of which almost 32,900 tonnes was recycled or composted. That's down very slightly from 42.8% in 2024.

It puts Renfrewshire 20th out of Scotland's 32 councils, just below the Scottish average of 42.8%, which has fallen to its lowest level in five years.

Very little going to landfill

Where Renfrewshire does stand out is landfill. Only around 2,355 tonnes of household waste, 3.1% of the total, went into the ground last year, compared with almost 10% across Scotland as a whole.

Most of the rest, 54.3%, was diverted from landfill in other ways, mostly through energy-from-waste treatment, where rubbish is burned to generate electricity rather than buried.

How we compare with our neighbours

  • East Renfrewshire: 53.3% recycled
  • Inverclyde: 53.1%
  • Renfrewshire: 42.7%
  • West Dunbartonshire: 40.0%
  • Glasgow: 26.0%

Clackmannanshire was top of the table at 56.5%, followed by South Ayrshire and East Lothian. Orkney had the lowest rate at 18.2%.

Each person in Renfrewshire produced about 407kg of household waste last year, a little below the Scottish average of 417kg, and recycled around 174kg of it.

Still short of national targets

Scotland's recycling rate has hovered around 42 to 45% for more than a decade. A Scottish Government plan set out in 2010 aimed for 70% by 2025, and a ban on sending black-bag waste to landfill, due to start this year, has effectively been pushed back to 2028.

Sepa says the figures show an "ongoing challenge" in how Scotland manages its waste, and that the focus needs to be on producing less waste in the first place and recycling more of what is left.

Research by Zero Waste Scotland suggests more than half of what goes into general waste bins could have been recycled, so checking what goes in which bin is still the easiest way to help push Renfrewshire's figure back up.

Image: Linwood Household Waste Recycling Centre. Photo: Richard Sutcliffe, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.