Why Can't We Recycle All This Plastic?

MEGAN LANE / BBC News Online 19sep03

A trip to the shops these days is likely to result in almost as much packaging as food. And once used, these wrappers, bags and trays are destined for the bin. Ever tried to find a place to recycle plastics in the UK? It's a fruitless mission.

Shopping list: Nectarines, kiwifruit, avocado, goat's cheese, baked potatoes, sliced ham, olives, and cheesecake for afters. Rubbish generated: four plastic bags, clingfilm, six plastic pots, trays - one polystyrene foam, two plastic and one pulped cardboard - a cake-shaped plastic box and a cardboard box with plastic windows, all packed into a plastic carrier bag. So what to do with this lot once lunch has been scoffed? Straight into the bin it goes. While we are encouraged - and will soon be required by law - to recycle our waste, it is not always straightforward to put this into practice.

The one tray made from cardboard is biodegradable and can be composted (by those with gardens). While the local supermarket has a collection point for carrier bag recycling, no other type of plastic is accepted.

Down the road at the recycling centre, there are bins for newspapers, aluminium cans, glass, even clothing and shoes, but not plastics. The local council is not much help either; plastic isn't included in its kerbside collection. Yet this material makes up the bulk of our household waste. Each year, Britons get through 5m tonnes of plastic, barely one-tenth of which is recycled. Little wonder then that only Portugal and Greece fare worse than the UK in European league tables - the virtuous countries at the top have found uses for much of what we discard.

Waste not, want not

This weekend, the UN's annual Clean Up the World event will focus on litter prevention and reducing the use of plastic bags. Recycling is one way to stop rubbish piling up, so too is a crack down on over-wrapping.

"I've always said that supermarkets use far too much packaging," says Notting Hill resident, Eileen, a 73-year-old out doing her weekly shop. "Just look at this roast chicken - it's in a tray, which is in a bag, which is then bagged in plastic. They say it's for hygiene reasons but it wasn't needed in my day."

PLASTICS RECYCLED

• 11.3m plastic bottles collected for recycling since 1989
• 49% of UK councils run collection schemes for bottles
• This includes 4,100+ bottle banks and kerbside pick-up for 3.6m+ homes
• Recoup figures

Over-packaged fruit and veg, too, riles her. "What they used to do - and still do at market stalls - is weigh what you need and pop it all in a bag. The council did come round and ask if we wanted recycling - everybody was in favour of it, but nothing's happened."

The UK's problem with recycling plastic is not in finding a use for it. It's in getting it from the consumer to the reprocessing plant.

The cost of pick-up, storage and delivery far outweighs what local authorities can earn by taking plastics to be recycled - the only exception is drinks bottles, which are heavier than, say, yoghurt pots, and so are worth more.

In a survey by Recoup, the UK's household plastics recycling organisation, 75% of councils without a collection scheme blame the cost.

"It's a chicken and egg situation," says Claire Wilton, of Friends of the Earth. "There's not many reprocessors in the UK, so many councils find it's not worth collecting plastics. And because there's not much used plastic available, there are not many reprocessors."

Many uses

Alan Davey, of Linpac Plastics Recycling, says his firm - like the majority of others in this field - deals mainly with commercial and industrial waste.

"All this food packaging of yours is recoverable but there's no effective subsidised collection system in the UK to make it worth the effort. "If there was, we could turn it into car parts, video cassettes, shampoo bottles - we have 1,100 product applications. Anything that can be made from virgin plastic can be made from recycled plastic. The quality is the same."

Instead, much of it goes into landfill or up in smoke in an incinerator. Neither does the environment any favours. Plastic takes centuries to break down - not only taking up space but leaching toxins into the soil and water. And burning plastic is like burning a fossil fuel, as it is made from oil.

So if not plastic, then what? "A lot less packaging," says Ms Wilton, of Friends of the Earth. "Even biodegradable bags cause problems - unless you compost them at home - as they release methane, one of the most powerful greenhouse gases."

In the meantime, the thing that really has worked in cutting the amount of plastic used is tax. The success of Ireland's 15c tax on each supermarket bag - which has slashed bag usage and earned the Exchequer 11m euros - is expected to be repeated elsewhere.

source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/magazine/3116318.stm 2jan04