It's five years ago this week since we reported on how much household rubbish was thrown away in Epping Forest.

The people of Epping Forest threw away the equivalent of 100,000 hippopotamuses worth of rubbish over the last two years.

From October 2015 to June 2017, 152,099 tonnes of rubbish were discarded by residents across the district, a freedom of information request has revealed.

With an average African male hippo weighing in at 1.5 tonnes, it would take 101,399 of the famously porky mammals to balance the scales.

By far the biggest chunk of the grand total was made up of paper, with 94,000 tonnes thrown out, compared to 14,019 tonnes of glass, 55,691 tonnes of mixed garden waste and 3,353 tonnes of mixed plastic.

Also binned were 378 tonnes of fridges and freezes and 227 tonnes of furniture.

Before it was processed by the council, 12,142 tonnes were sorted into different bins by residents, 55,000 tonnes were collected in green and food waste bins and 76,000 tonnes were thrown in general bins.

Of the trash’s various end destinations across Essex, the UK and countries outside the EU, 1,239 tonnes were incinerated, 20,717 tonnes sent to a mineral recovery plant, 27,845 tonnes left to compost and 61,000 tonnes dumped in a landfill.

Only 476 tonnes were reused.