Council chiefs have rubbished claims that recyclable waste is being sent to landfill sites instead of being processed.

The claims, which appeared in Saturday’s Daily Telegraph, labelled Medway as the worst offending council in the country for sending recyclable items to incinerators or land fill sites.

The newspaper accused Medway Council of sending more than 10 per cent of its total recyclable waste, which includes all materials deposited at bottlebanks and composting facilities, to land fill. But council chiefs argue the figure is much smaller.

Cllr Phil Filmer, portfolio holder for front line services, said: “Only five per cent of material initially collected for recycling or for composting is sent to land fill. This is because it is contaminated in some way and cannot, therefore, be recycled.

“In the last four years, Medway has doubled the amount of waste it recycles and now recycles or composts more than 30 per cent of all the waste it collects.

The global downturn in the economy has forced some councils to store their recyclable waste as it is not economically viable to process it.

But, said Cllr Filmer, this was not the case in Medway. He said: “The council’s recycling is not affected by the economic downturn and we have not changed our recycling policy, except to increase the range of material we can recycle, since it was introduced in 2002.”

The Daily Telegraph surveyed all 400 councils across England and Wales. Only 209 replied and of them about 75 per cent admitted to some waste going to land fill sites or incinerators.

Medway Council was one of the local authorities which responded.