What the government factors count
The government's waste factors are built for Scope 3 reporting under the GHG Protocol, and they count different things depending on the route:
- Landfill: the methane that comes from waste rotting, plus collection. That makes landfill high for paper, food and wood, and low for plastics, metal and glass, which don't rot.
- Recycling, energy recovery, composting and anaerobic digestion: only collecting the waste and taking it to the plant. The government says these factors don't cover the environmental impact of the different options.
The government is direct about it: the company sending waste for recycling gets no benefit in its carbon account from replacing new material. That benefit goes to the organisation that uses the recycled material instead of virgin material.
Landfill against the alternative, per tonne (2026)
| Material | Landfill (kg CO2e) | Alternative | kg CO2e |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paper and card | 1,165 | recycling | 4.65358 |
| Food waste | 700 | anaerobic digestion | 9.00687 |
| Wood | 925 | recycling | 4.65358 |
| Plastics (mixed) | 9 | recycling | 4.65358 |
| Metal cans (mixed) | 9 | recycling | 4.65358 |
| Glass | 9 | recycling | 4.65358 |
General waste sent to landfill is 521 kg per tonne. See the landfill and recycling factor pages for every year back to 2019. The lesson for your footprint: get the things that rot out of the general waste bin.
A worked example
An office with a staff café sends 6.5 tonnes a year of mixed general waste to landfill. A waste audit finds it holds 3 tonnes of paper and card, 2 tonnes of food, 1 tonne of plastics and half a tonne of glass. These are example figures.
| Stream | Tonnes | Separated to | kg CO2e |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paper and card | 3 | recycling | 14 |
| Food | 2 | anaerobic digestion | 18 |
| Plastics | 1 | recycling | 5 |
| Glass | 0.5 | recycling | 2 |
| After separating | 6.5 | 39 | |
| Before: all to landfill as general waste | 6.5 | landfill | 3,384 |
Separating the streams cuts the reported waste emissions from 3.38 to 0.04 tonnes, about 99% less. Our post on waste emissions from your contractor's data shows how to get the tonnes.
What recycling really saves
The real-world benefit of recycling is that it replaces new material, and that shows up in a different part of the government's tables: the material use factors, which cover making a tonne of material from virgin or from recycled sources.
| Material | From virgin sources (kg CO2e per tonne) | From recycled sources |
|---|---|---|
| Aluminium cans and foil | 9,114 | 994 |
| Metal cans (mixed) | 5,112 | 1,524 |
| Plastics (average) | 3,171 | 1,573 |
| Glass | 1,403 | 823 |
| Paper and card (mixed) | 1,287 | 1,067 |
A tonne of aluminium cans and foil made from recycled metal is 994 kg CO2e against 9,114 kg from virgin sources. That is the environmental reason to recycle, and it is real. But under the GHG Protocol's Scope 3 Standard you shouldn't deduct it from your own footprint. You can report avoided emissions separately from your scopes, if you can show the material was collected, recycled and used, and you explain the method. Where you do get the credit is as a buyer: choose paper, packaging and products with recycled content, and your purchased goods figure falls.
The law on separating waste
In England, the Simpler Recycling rules have required workplaces to separate dry recyclables (plastic, metal, glass, paper and card), food waste and residual waste since 31 March 2025. Micro-firms with fewer than 10 full-time-equivalent employees have until 31 March 2027. Wales has had its own workplace recycling law since 6 April 2024. So for many firms, separating waste isn't optional, and it brings the carbon saving above with it.
How Carbon Recycling helps
Record each waste stream in tonnes with its material and treatment, using the same options as the government tables, and Carbon Recycling puts it in Scope 3 category 5 with the right year's factor. If the government doesn't publish a factor for a material and treatment, the app tells you which treatments it does publish, so you never end up with a made-up figure. To record recycled-content purchases with the material use factors, use the option to pick any government factor. Separating waste is one of the measures in this series, alongside LED lighting and keeping laptops longer, and you can add it to your Carbon Reduction Plan as a measure.