It’s official - residents of South Oxfordshire and the Vale of White Horse continue to be the best in the country at recycling. According to official Defra figures, South Oxfordshire sits at the top of the chart for 2014/15 with a 67.3 per cent recycling rate, with the Vale just below in second place with 65.6 per cent. This continues the districts’ domination of the recycling charts which has seen them in the top three for the last three years. The results are even more impressive given the improvement in recycling rates nationally. The 2014/15 table, marks the first time that all councils in the top ten have achieved an overall recycling rate of 60 per cent or more. The news also comes just weeks after the successful launch of South and Vale’s new recycling services that allow residents to recycle small electrical items and textiles from the kerbside. After less than two months people had already put out more than 13 tonnes of electrical items and over 11 tonnes of textiles. Councillor Matthew Barber, Leader of the Vale of White Horse, said: “We can’t thank our residents enough for their efforts. They’ve really taken to our new recycling services, too – we don’t want to rest on our laurels; we’re always looking for new ways to recycle as much as we can.” There’s a note of caution to go with the good news – recently the councils have been dealing with a lot of recycling being contaminated with things that can’t be recycled - including food waste from dirty food containers, and nappies. Recent changes in legislation about how contaminated recycling can be dealt with means that whole loads of recycling could end up being landfilled due to contamination. The councils are working on ways of preventing the wrong waste going in the wrong bin.