Recycled
litter could generate £15 million for the UK, according to a new report.
However, with many recyclables still ending up in landfills or being
transported overseas, many critics question whether recycling is even worth it.
The report, published by
the group Keep Britain Tidy, calculated the direct costs of cleaning up litter
in the UK at £1 billion per year, and called for an increase in the amount of
waste that is actually recycled.
The findings stated that
if half of the littered items in Britain were recycled, the economy would
receive a £14.8 million annual boost through the re-use of these products, and
reduced costs of transporting them to landfills.
Recycling in Britain has
increased significantly over the past two decades, with 43 percent of all
household waste now recycled, compared to just 7 percent in the 1995. This
increase has been promoted by the government and environmental groups as part
of EU targets to recycle 50 percent of household waste by 2020.
However, despite a
greater environmental awareness and calls for an increase in recycling, there
are still significant amounts of recyclables that end up as rubbish, while 70
percent of all British usable household waste is sent overseas to processing
plants in countries like China.
Many critics of
recycling say that the cost of transporting this waste to China is not
efficient, and that environmental emissions associated with transporting the
waste in fact outweigh the potential benefits associated with recycling the
products in the first place.
Keep Britain Tidy’s
evidence and policy manager Tim Burns says he understands the arguments about
the inefficiency of sending recyclables overseas, but the environmental
benefits of offshore processing are far greater than simply dumping them in
landfills.
“We’d like to see more
infrastructure developed back in the UK, so that we can process materials more
effectively and can gain more jobs and economic value from that. And it also
means that we’ve got a sustainable, recyclable supply of materials feeding our
economy,” Burns said. “In some respects, the environmental damage isn’t quite
as bad as what we’re being led to believe, because the ships come across from
China, supplying a lot of the goods that we buy, and they go back empty.
Sometimes they even need to put on water, or sometimes recyclables for ballast.
So effectively you’ve got a lot of empty journeys going back to China from the
UK that are filled with recyclables that China then uses to package and provide
more goods for the UK”.
Other critics have cited
the complexities of the current recycling process as a reason why significant
amounts of ‘contaminated’ recyclable waste is dumped into landfill.
They attack the
over-complication of the process in some parts of the country, which some say
can lead to people simply giving up on recycling altogether.
In some regions of
Britain, residents are supplied with nine different types of bags and bins to
dispose of different types of recyclables, leading to widespread confusion.
Although this practice
has been applauded for separating the various types of recyclables, many local
citizen groups have argued that this is impractical, particularly for those
living in high-rise and built up urban areas.
The establishment of
more advanced waste-sorting machinery in facilities across the UK has led to
many different types of recyclable waste — such as glass and paper — being
successfully separated and therefore able to be re-used.
However, this system is
not yet widespread throughout the country, with much of Britain’s mixed
recyclables ending up in landfill.
Although the debate over
the practicality and cost efficiency of recycling processes continues, Tim
Burns believes there are unintended consequences for society stemming from
preventable littering.
“There are other
associated costs that are more hidden or less direct. For example, litter is
often associated with a high risk of crime, or that litter has a material value
if it was recycled or used more effectively. It can cause tyre punctures,
traffic accidents or wildfires, so there are all of these less direct but
costly impacts of having litter across the country,” he said.
The KBT report cited
research which found a correlation between places with significant amounts of
litter and crime. The study found that areas that had seen a significant
reduction in the amount of rubbish on the streets had also seen a significant
drop in the number of reported crimes, as opposed to those areas that weren’t
cleaned.
The increased emphasis
on recycling has prompted Tim Burns to point out the additional public services
that could be improved as a result of costs being appropriated from cleaning
litter.
“We haven’t thought too
much about what money could be spent on — we’ve focussed more on what money
could be saved… But when money is going towards that, [cleaning rubbish] it
can’t be spent on libraries, social care, education or other vital services
that local authorities provide… The more that we can do to reduce the cost of
statutory services – like litter collection – the more that money can be
dedicated towards where that need is greatest.”
Criticism over current
recycling practices and the decision to ship recyclable waste overseas has
highlighted some of the inefficiencies of the current practice in the UK.
While acknowledging some
of the shortfalls in the current recycling process, campaigners argue that
maintaining a ‘green’ approach to processing recyclables will have a far
greater environmental, economic and social impact in the long run.
Source: sputnik news. 04
December 2014
http://uk.sputniknews.com/uk/20141204/1013276585.html
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