We need to rethink our views on household waste, it is not rubbish, it is a resource. Any scavenger will tell you that, like those from Poland in my 
picture.
It’s an issue our government has ignored for years, which is why we are the worst recyclers in Europe. But there is money in muck, as China’s wealthiest woman appreciates, having made her fortune from recycling America’s waste paper.
Now the Local Government Association wants to charge householders for all household waste as our landfill situation is so dire in the UK that we will run out in 9 years unless rubbish is tackled differently. The UK dumps more rubbish at landfill than any other country in Europe. Nobody wants incinerators for residue, so that just leaves recycling.
The LGA wants to reward those households which throw out less by cutting their council tax bills. However, It is not householders’ fault that government has failed to take this matter seriously before and this situation has arisen. What’s unfair about this is that each authority has is own recycling programme based on where it can send what it collects to be recycled. Some collect garden and kitchen waste, others take away plastic bottles. But then some don’t. That’s why it is so confusing. There is no single nationwide recycling programme that people can easily follow. So some householders will end paying more for the rubbish that is collected through no fault of their own.
I preferred Michael Meacher’s idea when he was Environment Secretary, he wanted to introduce variable waste charges to householders which would have allowed two sacks of rubbish to be collected from each property, with a £1 charge for any extra. I would, however, reduce it to collecting one rubbish bag before charging.
It’s government that needs to rethink rubbish – keep it simple, make all local authorities collect the same recyclables, give householders equal opportunities to do their bit.
Remember, waste is not rubbish, it’s a resource.
I HAVE to say this:- in my travels i am surprised at just how much rubbish exists in the UK and France. its almost as if the attitude is “don’t worry! Someone will clean it up”.
I have seen people throw rubbish out of windows and bins overflow.. that would not happen here (by the main).
However:- manufacturers MUST change the way they package things. We have 2 bins. One for non recylcables.. the other for those things that can be. eg bottles tins paper and cardboard.
we fill this bin faster than the other.. its a worry to see all the packaging!
Its another area that we the consumer can have our say! :o)
Great post Ellee. Finally, after years of ignoring the message, here down under we appear to be “getting it” and treating our household waste as resource 🙂
I agree Ellee, I proposed such a scheme on conservative home as was heavily voted down.
However, another key aspect, as ever, is local planning. There are new incinerators that produce little of no waste (wiki them if you don’t believe me). A few of these incinerators would help ot generate more non-fossil fule power and reduce landfill.
In the long-term we also need to produce less waste; which in many cases means less being delivered to our homes if possible. Companies are on to this but need more pressure from ys as consumers.
A good exmaple; why don’t we have brown paper bags at supermarkets? cheap, recyclable and disposable. It just needs some consumer pressure not this ill-though out government tax-raising malarky that we have at the moment.
There is a simple meme already – reduce, reuse, recycle.
We need to reduce first – most importantly in terms of items that are unnecessary and are difficult to recycle. Such as those plastic containers beautifully holding a couple of pieces of fruit. Who wants to bring home so much rubbish from the supermarkets?
We also need to make things more reusable – particularly in terms of machinery which is no longer repaired or upgraded but simply dumped. Where is the “make do and mend” philosophy? In food terms, why do we encourage ready meals rather than the old-fashioned idea of making something that through creative cooking lasts the week?
When it comes to recycling, the big issue is over signifianct use of recylates, which means industry. When I worked with Ford their materials development team at Dunton in Essex were focused on buying recycled rather than raw materials in particular, plastics and insulation materials (made from recycled jeans). If there is a market for the recycled materials, then there is even more incentive for recycling.
We also need imagination and a passion for recycling. Why can they recycle plastic bottle tops in Germany, but we are told to throw them away? We need the attitudes of the old rag and bone men, who found a use for everything – where there’s muck there’s brass.
My final point is what is government itself doing – I wonder how much they are living by the 3Rs in government departments.
Wrote a post on this too yesterday – http://www.toryradio.com
Lots of people want to recycle but you need to make it easy for them. If people are told they HAVE to wash stinky cat food tins out for them to be recylced I dont think everone will. If recycling bins get really complicated about what can go in and what can’t people don’t do it.
Lets incentivise people who DO recycle to make it an attractive proposition rather than trying to tackle this issue by punishing those why don’t do it YET.
I agree with you Ellee.
The problem I have is that at uni I live in a flat, and there is no council-provided recycling. My flatmate and I recycle what we can, but it is far less than we would like simply because to recycle anything, we have to carry it for 20 minutes to the supermarket recycling facility, which is hard work when neither of us has a car.
To start with, I think that all councils should required to provide easy recycling facilities for all residential properties. Until recycling is available to everyone for everything that can be recycled, we will never reduce the amount we throw away.
Heather, Reduce, reuse and recycle is the idealistic model that we all aspire too, and local authorities have been trying to get this message across. New recycling facilities take co-mingled waste, they don’t need to be separated in advance. This is one way of making it easier for householders.
The point Thunder Dragon raises demonstrates how those living in areas without recycling faclities will end up paying more under LGA proposals when it is no fault of their own. They will be expected to find the nearest recycling facilities and use those, rather than have a kerbiside collection. And that’s difficult for those who, like Thunder Dragon who don’t have a car, as well as pensioners who might be in the same position.
I’m not quite sure I agree with your title Ellee. How exactly can our waste be a ‘resource’? If it was, we wouldn’t exactly throw it away, would we? If anything, if it was a ‘resource’ wouldn’t this be reflected in its price? Shouldn’t the council then be buying our rubbish.. sorry, ‘resource’ from us? I think not.
Our rubbish is exactly what it is – rubbish.
Also, it’s not entirely self-evident that recycling is even a worthwhile activity – millions of people in the UK have been recycling for years, yet the quantities of recyclable material we’re talking about is tiny compared with the rubbish that’s produced by industry, or the commercial and public sectors.
Indeed, the Financial Times confirmed this last year when they argued that ‘the sort of recycling that makes a difference occurs outside the home, not in it’.
In fact, it is only in the area of industry that recycling makes any economic sense, because household waste only makes up a relatively small part to total waste produced.
One other point about why household waste is worthless is the problem of ‘contamination’. You can have a lorry load of green glass that has taken diligent and considerate people time to sort through, only to be thrown in a land fill, all because someone threw their Mars Bar wrapper in the same batch. A whole batch can become uneconomic to process because of such contamination.
If anything, recycling household waste in the UK is a waste of precious time, because there’s no real reason why we should it. Of course we are all in favour of ‘saving the planet’, but recycling household waste is nothing but a time consuming, expensive charade. Your right Ellee, the government needs to put the case simply, because they seem unable to convince hardly anyone that recycling makes sense.
Good post. However, the thing I worry about with charging is that instead of leading to reduced household rubbish it will lead to an increased amount of inappropriately dumped rubbish from those seeking to avoid the charges.
By charging we would not only be encouraging people to produce less waste we’d also be encouraging them to avoid the correct methods of disposal. Whilst most would pay the extra it would not take many people dumping rubbish by the road side etc to create a public health hazard.
We already see this to some extent with large items and builders waste dumped by the roadside – I think we need to find other solutions that avoid this extra charging, inparticular as one commentator mentioned trying to ensure the companies themselves as more disciplined when it comes to packaging etc.
> the thing I worry about with charging is that instead of leading to reduced household rubbish it will lead to an increased amount of inappropriately dumped rubbish
I agree that this is an important concern.
Courtney, My car is made from 95% of recyled materials – that shows you how waste is a resource. Just look around your room, the glass you drink from, the cutlery you use, the plastic made goods everywhere, you are surrounded by examples of how recyling our waste can create new materials. The fleeces you wear are made from recycled plastic bottles.
The government has failed to consider the long term view of recycling else the facilities would be in place to take them all.
I agree that household waste is only a small percentage of the overall waste produced in the UK, that businesses and producers must be seen to do their bit too.
I don’t like the fortnightly rubbish collection from many homes which has led to an increase of vermin, and it has plainly failed to engage with the public too. Public support is crucial on this issue. I also believe local authorities should collect large household waste items to prevent fly tipping, that a certain day should be designated for a collection from each area once a month, for example.
It is disappointing when recyclables are contaminated, but mostly people are supportive.
I agree with jim jay, I’ve recently returned from Ireland were everyone has to pay to get their waste collected. In Ireland, that means, on average, 1 in every 5 households do not have a waste collection service because they failed to pay – which means that some 287,000 tonnes of household waste ends up on the streets, or being burned in backyards, or just being dumped in the nearest forest.
Those figures are for 2005 – things are pretty much the same today in Ireland.
We can expect more of this in the UK if extra charges are brought in.
“I don’t like the fortnightly rubbish collection from many homes which has led to an increase of vermin”.
Don’t forget the return of maggots in the summer months.
Sorry – here’s the reference for that comment above.
Is recycling waste always the best thing to do for the environment?
In 2005, we exported around 40% of our collected waste paper for recycling/disposal abroad, with 30% of it ending up in Asia (20% in China). Are there environmental benefits to recycling paper, compared to burning it locally to make electricity (a generator in every street?), or making a bonfire in your own garden, or simply burying it (it is 100% biodegradable). Recycling involves burning fossil fuels to collect it and take it to a distribution centre, then more to separate some of it off into lorries, which then burn more to take it to ports, with more fossil fuels burned to take it half way around the world.
And why should we recycle green waste? There is no point! My local council used to collect green waste, burning fossil fuels collecting it, taking it to a central composter, to then burn more fossil fuels to take it to a packing plant, whereby it was wrapped in plastic bags (non-biodegradable and made from oil, that ultimately ended up in landfill) and sold to B&Q – yet more fossil fuels burned in taking the product to distribution centres and then stores. The ultimate kick in the guts is that the product would be returned to the gardens of people, some of whome the waste came from! Again, a far better solution would be for people to compost their own green waste and use it themselves.
Recycling in the UK is a complete fraud – because councils are fined on the weight/volume of waste put into landfill, and not the damage that it causes to the environment, we are recycling the wrong things. Why do we throw away plastic, which does not biodegrade easily? And what about electronic goods, glass or metal? Whilst we recycle some glass and aluminium cans, these things should be the things we recycle the most.
What is wrong with incinerators to make electricity from paper or green waste? Heaven forbid, we could even put plastics in them (not particularly polluting and far better than burying).
We need to get a grip – recylcing is not the be all and end all of environmental policy. We should identify the least environmentally damaging way of dealing with a particular type of waste and apply it. Recycling will be a part of that process, but the process should not be limited to it.