Rachel Shields | May 10

The Independent - Households are consuming less and recycling more, according to the latest official figures

England's rubbish mountains are finally shrinking, with people binning less now than at any time in living memory. New figures obtained by The Independent on Sunday reveal that the conspicuous consumption and obscene wastage that have come to characterise the nation have slowed dramatically in the face of the recession.

Last week, the latest statistics from the Department for Food, Environment and Rural Affairs (Defra) revealed that the amount of waste sent to landfill or incinerated per person in England has fallen to the lowest level since estimates were first made.

Local councils and waste management companies across the whole country are reporting a drop of up to 10 per cent in waste collection in recent months, a fall that the UK environmental charity Waste Watch estimates could result in a massive reduction of 2.5 million tonnes in waste production in 2009 – enough rubbish to fill Canary Wharf five times over.