The recession has cut waste in the UK more than anything else since the Second World War. But Mike Webster of Waste Watch fears that his compatriots might be back to business as usual once things start to pick up again.
 | Mike Webster, Senior Consultant, Waste Watch"If you want to see the best example of recycling, I suggest you go to a remote African village where everything gets reused." (Photo: Waste Watch) |
What is the biggest source of waste in the UK today?
A big thing is industrial and commercial waste. Businesses in the UK are still not recycling as much waste as they should. That is a big cost for them, because the cost of disposing of this waste is going up. But many businesses have not really caught on.
On a domestic level, the thing that gets most attention is food waste. About a third of the food we buy is thrown away every year. That is worth about 600 pounds per family and that is a major part of our waste stream.
How could we avoid wasting so much?
Avoiding food waste only takes a few small things. By turning your fridge down by a few degrees, by planning your meals, and by using your leftovers you can save an awful lot of money; and it’s going to help the environment at the same time. The younger generations seem to be rediscovering this waste-not, want-not approach.
You need to rethink your consumption patterns. Do you really need this new car? The Happy Planet Index has shown that economic growth hasn’t brought us a lot of satisfaction. We at Waste Watch hope that people will reassess their values in a broader sense.
So have we learned how to handle waste or is the situation worse than ever?
Generally, the wealthier a country is the better it manages its waste, but the more it produces. Denmark, known for having quite a good environmental record, produces about 40 percent more waste per person than the EU-27 average. A lot if this excess might be recycled, but they are still producing a lot more in the first place.
And the real impact from waste is not how it is managed; it’s actually the energy that goes into producing the stuff in the first place. Managing food waste takes only about two percent of the energy needed to produce the food.
So it’s a double-edged sword. What we are producing, we are managing a lot better than twenty years ago. On the other hand, we do consume more and we produce a lot more waste.
Is the recession helping your cause?
Since the post-war period there has been a steady 2 to 3 percent increase of waste every year. But in the last year, the recession knocked ten percent off domestic waste levels in the UK.
This shows us that the whole direction of economic growth is the problem. It turned out that there was much less waste from refurbishing kitchens or remodelling bathrooms. People were throwing out less white goods, washing machines, dishwashers. They weren’t upgrading so much.
But we fear that the reduction in waste is almost a blip. Things are beginning to pick up again and it seems like we are back to business as usual. Today, there is almost inbuilt obsolescence in many consumer goods. And we have got to try and move away from that approach.
What about plastics, are they less of a problem now?
The problem with plastics is that they just don’t rot. There is a move towards biodegradable packaging, but that still seems very sketchy.
Plastics made of corn starch will biodegrade if you compost them, but they won’t if you put them in a landfill because there is no air there. You also have those which only degrade under UV light so you have to keep it in sunlight and then it takes several months before it biodegrades. I am not convinced by this technology just yet.
Plastics can be recycled, but the environmental benefits aren’t as great as they are from recycling aluminium or glass.
If you buy your six-pack of beer in Denmark, you pay an extra two Euros deposit. Those beer bottles are robust and well-designed. You take them back, get your deposit back and they will be reused again. That is what we are trying to promote with plastics in the UK. The challenge is to design the plastic goods so that they can be better reused.
How much of our waste can actually be recycled?
In the UK, the best local authorities are recycling 70 percent of their waste. If you look in certain parts of Germany, Japan, or Scandinavia, they have been going up to 80 percent for several years now. So it’s possible, but across the UK we now have only a 37 percent recycling rate.
But a lot of the poorer countries in the world produce a lot less waste in the first place. So if you want to see the best example of recycling, I suggest you go to a remote African village where everything gets reused.
When does recycling make most sense?
The main benefit of recycling really is when it comes to saving energy and carbon. Aluminium, for example, is extremely energy intensive to make, you use 5 percent of the energy to recycle an aluminium can that you do to make it new.
That is also true for glass, paper, and many other materials but less so with plastics. And there is the diversion from landfill. If your organic waste is rotting in a landfill it’s in there producing methane, a very potent greenhouse gas.
How has the recycling industry coped with the economic crisis and falling prices?
Prices for waste have been hit as they have for all commodities. In the UK, however, it was more like a quality crunch. The way that you collect, mingle and sort waste is decisive. If households separate their waste well the quality is much better. And this ‘quality’ waste hasn’t suffered as much as the low-quality waste.
But there are still manufacturers who use recycled materials who can’t get enough quality materials within the UK—they import from Europe—and that is a crazy situation. The recyling the loop should be closed locally.
editor: Thilo Kunzemann
publishing date: November 20, 2009
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