Christmas might be over but dotted around the country recycling bins are overflowing with the detritus of Yuletide gifts and excess
It would be fair to assume that the contents of these recycling bins will be given a new or similar purpose, but what is the most effective way of maximising the waste that goes into them?
The current government appears to have thought about this, having announced new plans to reduce waste in general and improve recycling volumes in particular.
According to our last poll of 2018, 38 per cent of respondents believe recycling can be maximised by shifting the burden of reuse onto producers. A group of 44 per cent of respondents was divided equally between those who see a solution in more funding for recycling infrastructure, and those opting for better information on recyclable materials.
Of the remaining vote, 14 per cent opted for incentives for certain materials (bottles and cans, for example), and four per cent went for ‘none of the above’, including Silvia Leahu-Aluas who explained: “By the time a product or material has reached recycling it has the lowest value and highest entropy. We know that from one of the few economists who knows what he is talking about on a finite planet and who understands the world as it is and not as we imagine it:
“…useful, low-entropy energy and materials are dissipated in transformations that occur in economic processes, and they return to the environment as high-entropy wastes. The economy, then, functions as a conduit for converting natural resources into goods, services, human satisfaction, and waste products. Increasing entropy in the economy sets the limit on the scale it can achieve and maintain.” Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen “The Entropy Law and the Economic Process”, 1971.
“We should prioritise the first R’s of sustainability: Refuse Reduce Reuse Repurpose.”
The debate rages on, so tell The Engineer what you think in Comments below. All comments are moderated and must abide by our Comment guidelines for readers.
Better information !
Consistency of recycling on a UK basis, as opposed to every council doing something different.
Better information from councils with regard to what they actually do with the recycling.
My impression is that, now that councils cannot export their recycling overseas a lot of it is going into landfill or being burnt. This will lead to people not bothering so needs to be countered with transparent information from councils, and government.
The disparity between local authority schemes across the country is perplexing. All (thermo)plastics are recyclable, yet different councils accept different types of plastic. The driver seems to be an economic one rather than one rooted in responsibility, which OK you can sort of agree with given that it inevitably comes down to taxation. Which is why I think the burden should be shifted to the producer. Make it more profitable for them to use materials that are easier to recycle/biodegrade and you’re guaranteed an improvement.
Consistency isn’t just about informing (although that does help when away from home) – it’s more about standardising best practice. There should be a list of materials that HAVE to be recycled, based on what’s possible. If my local council can recycle Tetrapak style cartons, this should be rolled out nationally, etc. Clearly a transition would be necessary – but having statutory requirements would present an opportunity for businesses to be set up to deal with all the waste streams.
for residents of – say – Nottingham and Sheffield who benefit from district heating from the neighbourhood waste incinerator, it makes sense to include a high calorific material like plastic into the mix – other locations may merit more effort to sort it out. But it requires a nuanced approach, rather than a simplistic reaction from politicians wanting to jump onto the ‘blue planet’ bandwagon
All of the above! But most of all make recycling consistent and easy without too many complex restrictions on what is acceptable. Carmarthenshire for example takes almost anything and has had waste food caddies for a number of years now.
Push the burden further back to source. Having a cauliflower sat in a plastic bag just so the supermarket can scan something at the till is nuts.
Consistency of infrastructure is essential and due to Councils having to sub their waste disposal to contractors; they all have different levels of capability, resulting in confusion for the users. Currently, neighbouring Councils have different strategies; some collect food, others don’t, some separate paper at source, others at transfer stations, etc..
In the end, we also need a market for these materials; all paper can be turned into loo roll or corrugated packaging, but plastics? Extruded artificial wood is one way, as it’s all masterbatched brown, but cleaning plastic for re-moulding also consumes a lot of energy and water, as well as the fuel required to get it to the re-manufacturing plant.
Brilliant idea to give back a deposit on empty bottles- why didn’t we think of this 100 years ago?
Bring back Public Information films , sponsored by the Govt., perhaps made by Media Undergrads, shown regularly to tell the public about the problem and what THEY can do about it.
Brilliant idea to give back a deposit on empty bottles- why didn’t we think of this 100 years ago?
We certainly did 50years ago when as kids we used to comb the beach after holidaymakers on a continual basis until the holiday season finished . It was a very lucrative way of getting our pocket money.as was case carrying on our homemade ” bogies”. The poor taxi drivers.
And less than 50 years ago: I used to take my grandparents’ lemonade bottles back to the shop to top up my pocket money!
I have lived in Germany for 17 years now, and this system works perfectly. Every supermarket has a machine to take the bottles and cans, and return the deposit automatically. A side effect is that you never see an empty bottle/can on the street – nice and tidy…
Consumers can only buy what and how producers produce. There is very little choice available to them. Manufacturers have to be responsible for designing products that can be recycled or repaired. It is fair then for consumers to be given the responsibility of doing that. Far too many goods are designed for the convenience of the manufacturer, sold as ‘convenient’ for the consumer, thereby avoiding any responsibility. Plastics should only be used when they can be reused or there is a defined and valid safety an health need.
How is making me drive to the supermarket to take all my cans and bottles back and posting into a machine to claim back the deposit an improvement on simply stepping outside and dropping them into the green recycling wheelie bin outside my house?
Pyrolysis driven power generation
Pyrolysis driven power generation is a last resort and is far too simplistic, as it does not recover any of the value nor most of the energy invested in creating the plastics in the first place. It also does not consider the environmental effect of burning mixed waste plastics, some of which are not suitable for pyrolysis and neither does to take into account the loss of a scarce resource, oil. A better solution is to replace plastics waste-to-energy with a carefully designed circular economy approach, using the most appropriate recycling processes, both mechanical and feedstock recycling (or chemical recycling), coupled with a unified system for collection and sorting of waste, instead of the piecemeal versions referred to by many of the replies above. All of this will require the entire plastics supply chain to work together, including designers, polymer and packing manufacturers, brand owners, retailers, waste management companies, recyclers, local and national government and of course consumers. It will also need significant investment of time and money.
Fortunately, the European Plastics industry has started to do something about this and governments, both local and national, need to take notice.
The proposal to shift responsibility for end of life management to product manufacturers should have been in place 2-3 decades ago. We should also have a carbon tax and reduce income tax commensurately. Innovation would then proliferate as in wartime, and R&D would be much more efficient than it currently is.
The whole approach is wrong.
We currently attempt to recycle materials where it can be sold. The rest goes into “landfill” or more likely land raising to make a mountain of mixed poisons and other hazards, that will become worse over the years.
We should separate everything. For example, non recyclable plastic should be put together in a landfill site, just for plastic. There are disused quarries and other holes in the ground that can’t be used for landfill because of the biohazard of landfill, so there are potential unused sites that could be plastic only dumps. The plastic on the edges could be heat treated and fused together to make sure it stays put. So we should put all plastic in the recycling bin.
Another example is nappies. They are a biohazard, but that will go away with time. They are compostable. (They contain tiny plastic tags that would be a pain. The manufactures say they are necessary, but they really mean there are plenty of biodegradable options, but the cost a fraction of a penny more.) Households with babies should get a nappy bin.
A pile of any single type of rubbish is very much easier to manage than a mixed bag.
Put the cost/burden onto the manufacturers? That just means a price rise for everybody, even for those who are trying to do the right thing. This idea is a nobody wins scenario.
That depends on how it’s managed. If you put a straight levy on the use of plastics in packaging etc., then yes. But, if governments subsidise or otherwise incentivise (tax relief?) the use of more responsible alternatives then producers have increased their profitability without having to worry about managing recycling infrastructure. It may be a grand idea, but managed correctly it would be very effective.
That is the point. There will be competition for manufactures to keep price increases low i.e. innovate recyclable materials or remove non recyclable materials. Tackle the problem source and reduce the amount of material that needs to be recycled in the first place.
Any packaging produced in or imported to the UK, should have a recycling route available in the UK, this should be the responsibility of the pack filler and producer of the packaging.
By ensuring that the business that is creating the packaging has to manage the environmentally sound disposal of the packaging then you ensure that two things are achieved; firstly packaging used will be more environmentally friendly (easier to recycle or dispose of) and that where the material can be recycled that systems are put into place to make it easy for the end user to recycle.
I’m not sure how much value Walkers have gained from their stance on recycling crisp bags, but it certainly got them their ten minutes in the spot light, so where pack fillers are pro-active the benefits are there, especially with the impact Blue Planet had on the social conscience 🙂
The weekly rubbish collection (as was), using properly-marked bins, is the best way to greenify our rubbish.
Councils are the villain here, by making Recycle Centres so user-hostile, staffed with operatives who’s only advice is “you can’t dump that here!”. No wonder the councils are spending far more on cleaning-up fly-tipping mess than they do on the “Recycling” centres.
So, if we are serious abliout the mountain of refuge we will all be drowning in, we should go back to the weekly rubbish collection. It’s the most practical way that recyclables can be properly sorted into bins. At all other points in the chain, the costs will be higher, so why are so many councils reducing the collections and talking about 3-week gaps?
I think we all know, but common sense should be brought to bear here, not just a blinkered look at the bottom line.
A little off topic, but someone I know used to work for central government and managed the development of policy on fly tipping. He despaired at local authorities’ insistence on increasing the implementation of waste disposal charges due to the rising cost of cleaning up fly tipped waste.
It doesn’t take a genius to work out that this simply results in a greater incidence of fly tipping by those who don’t want to pay more for their disposal permits! Cue the snowball effect…..
It may or may not be the case that a more centralised policy framework improves the situation, but clearly decentralised recycling policy isn’t as effective as it could be!
Leaving aside the massive problem of dealing with Plastic for a moment Everyone understands how useful and indispensable it has become overtime. We were ignorant of the long term consequences
However the “brilliant marketeers” are the main culprits.
Not only do they indiscriminitly cause so much despair for vulnerable poor low income families but they encourage the packaging to be encrusted with glitter, inks etc in order to be eye catching.
We must start educating the marketing people on damage limitation. Time is of the essence.
Another recycling related issue with the unintended consequence of polluting our environment is that of the “wheelie bin”.
I currently have two large bins (recycling and refuse) and if I was wasteful I could have two more (Food and garden), luckily I can store these out of the way and out of sight. However, what about all the terraced houses, flats, modern houses, etc. that have limited storage and end up leaving their bins in the street ? This s a form of pollution that really needs to be addressed as the one size fits all solution is, I believe, flawed.
Hi Steve, yes they are an eyesore aren’t they. Many years ago I visited Belgium to see how they handled waste in Antwerp … I was very impressed with their wheelie bins divided into quadrants by internal panels, each taking a different type of waste – and the bin lorries had four chutes diverting waste from the bin, as it was tipped, to a different compartment on the truck
the law of diminishing returns applies to recycling as elsewhere: beyond a certain point, the cost (expressed financially – or energy input – or carbon footprint) exceeds that of disposal. Modern landfill sites and incineration plant are both efficient and highly regulated to environmental standards; neither provide a pathway to marine pollution. Government schemes which impose unwarranted and excessive compliance costs always ultimately end up being paid for by the consumer are like a peculiar form of tax that, instead of producing a revenue that can be spent on public good (healthcare, education, defence, foreign aid …), just end up flinging fistfuls of banknotes onto a bonfire
We are about 25-30 years behind other European countries like Germany, Austria and the Netherlands. Back in 1990 in Germany glass bottles were used as the first choice and had a deposit system (as did plastic bottles), in Duesseldorf at that time we had 5 recycling bins (Vienna had 7). All supermarkets in Germany had to take back all the packaging from items that were sold, so this never went into the domestic waste system.
I worked for a US company that sold high performance polymers, and like all industrial companies in the early 90s we had to have strategy for taking back plastic bags, wrapping and pallets from across Europe. There was joined up thinking in respect of national schemes for local authority recycling and safe incineration of waste which was mandatory.
Today Sweden recycles 99% of its waste, it even imports waste from Norway.
Recycling in the UK is achievable and just needs a joined up strategy for all local authorities who collect the waste. Most plastics are already identified with marks and can be recycled…companies like BMW and Mercedes started a recycling plan for their cars in the mid 90s, all other car companies have followed.
I lived and worked from 1976 – 2008 in Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany and travelled for all that period across Europe. As a small example Sweden had a recycling system for aluminium cans in 1990 – you paid a deposit and when you had used the drinks can put in into a big box type machine (many of them in city centres) and you got a coin back.
Recycling is like so many things in the UK – No long term plan or clear strategy, just ship most of the waste somewhere else. Yes it will require investment by the government, but that will create new opportunities for companies to recycle materials, and is there is a clear plan with milestones and achievable goals then within 5-7 years 75-80% of waste could be recycled versus some low percentage now (say 30%).
All plastic is 100% recyclable, I’ve worked for a plastic moulding company since the 70’s. what you cannot do is mix different plastics then remould them effectively as they have different melting points. they need to be sorted, why not an id number on each article that can be sorted by high speed camera or by eye, hey presto problem solved!
This is ultimately an engineering question, all sorts of solutions have been tried, all over the world, the first world is pretty good at recycling but the third world, without much infrastructure (or wheelie bin technology!) just throws it in the sea! We need to make packaging disappear, literally, we have theft proof, un-openable, and way too much, packaging for often fairly shoddy products that would be just as well served by a brown paper bag. If you’ve ever worked in a warehouse environment you can easily see that plastic pallet wrapping outweighs any domestic pollution many times over. Packaging and plastic wrap that dissolves in sea water would be a good start to helping the oceans. Governments worldwide are implementing the UN’s agenda 21 and agenda 2030 to get rid of so many consumers, if we don’t fix the issue they will!
In my opinion it is not reasonable nor is it sensible to keep downloading the responsibility to the producers or the public. The Federal or National Government should develop a policy for acceptable packaging that will have adequate recycling systems and infrastructure in place. All regions need to support this policy and if the recycling system for any particular material is not near by in their region then this needs to be collected and transferred to the region with the system designed to recycle those materials. The public get tired of attempting to support a program that keeps pulling back or making the collection system inconvenient or virtually impossible to some. This is why there is so much abuse and why people continue not to properly sort the materials. Generally if there is not recycling system to re-purpose or safely incinerate the materials collected, within a reasonable distance to any or all districts either locally or by transfer, then those materials should not be approved or allowed by governments and consequently by all districts within that governments jurisdiction. Producers would quickly convert knowing that they cannot market their products unless they are in compliance with the Laws! It does not work to have different rules for every district of a city or even of a Country. In most places there is more than adequate amounts of the majority of materials being discarded to landfills, to warrant the installation of a system to properly re-purpose or safely incinerate them.
I don’t understand why incineration to generate energy is dismissed so readily. It solves the gassing issue, it resolves the landfill issue, it helps the energy price. It doesn’t need 4 or 5 wheelie bins per household.
None of the above. Here is why: by the time a product or material has reached recycling it has the lowest value and highest entropy. We know that from one of the few economists who knows what he is talking about on a finite planet and who understands the world as it is and not as we imagine it:
“…useful, low-entropy energy and materials are dissipated in transformations that occur in economic processes, and they return to the environment as high-entropy wastes. The economy, then, functions as a conduit for converting natural resources into goods, services, human satisfaction, and waste products. Increasing entropy in the economy sets the limit on the scale it can achieve and maintain.”
Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen “The Entropy Law and the Economic Process”, 1971
We should prioritize the first R’s of sustainability: Refuse Reduce Reuse Repurpose.
Firstly; the government need to regulate manufacturers, not charge more taxes, as they will just pass the cost onto the consumer. Second: produce only three types of plastic that are categorised for certain uses. This way it makes it easy to recycle with no confusion as to what goes where. Third: Use more paper & cardboard as we did 50 years ago for wrapping fruit & veg & other items. Anything else left that is not these products burn & the resulting energy can be used plus the land fill will be about 98% less. Obviously all metals can be easily recycled, as the same for glass.
Countrywide user friendly information on what can and cannot be recycled for industry and consumers, all councils using same process and bin colours. Remove the worst offending items from use completely.