What happens to our recycling?

I recycle, no problem?

With the world waking up to the threat of plastic pollution, we’re being bombarded with adverts telling us to recycle more. Many of us take immense care when recycling, but what happens to it once it’s collected?

According to Three Rivers Council’s website, once collected, your recycling (such as paper, cardboard, plastics, cans, drink cartons and glass) is transported to Pearce Group in St Albans, where it is sorted in a Materials Recycling Facility (MRF). Recyclables are separated by type using a variety of methods, including magnets, air jets and large rotating drums and then bulked ready for reprocessing.

Following this, the materials are then sold on by Pearce. The specific material, quality and wider market conditions at the time dictate where the material is sold on to. Pearce will do its best to find a UK market for all materials. However, sometimes there is no viable option to have the material reprocessed in the UK. Many soft plastic wrappers can [in theory – see below] now be recycled at larger supermarkets.

According to Greenpeace, thousands of tonnes of our household plastic packaging put out for recycling, as well as other kinds of plastic waste ends up in waste incinerators in the UK. These are giant furnaces for burning waste, and they cause air pollution, noise, smells, litter and traffic as waste is trucked in and smoke pours from the chimneys. Incinerators are overwhelmingly located in low-income areas and neighbourhoods. Some also goes into landfill, where it can leach toxic chemicals into the environment. But the rest gets recycled though, right? Wrong.

Well over half of the household plastic packaging the government claims is recycled is sent abroad, most of it going to countries with very low recycling rates and a serious problem  with plastic waste being dumped or burned illegally.

The amount the UK sends abroad is the equivalent of three and a half Olympic swimming pools every single day. The government claims all of this exported plastic gets recycled, but the truth is we have no idea what really happens to it because no one bothers to check.

Where our plastic waste goes changes all the time, because countries aren’t keen to clean up our mess and are trying to ban plastic waste imports. A few years ago most of our plastic “recycling” went to China; at the moment, more than half is going to Turkey and Malaysia.

It’s actually illegal to export plastic waste unless it’s going to be recycled, but investigators have found British plastic dumped by the side of the road, abandoned in illegal dumps or even set on fire in Turkey and Malaysia.

Plastic waste that gets dumped abroad can get blown by the wind into rivers and oceans, and a recent study shows plastic packaging and plastic bags is the most deadly form of plastic pollution for marine life. But what’s lesser known is that plastic waste dumps are causing serious health problems for people who live nearby.

So what can be done?

Certainly don’t stop, but recycling on its own isn’t the answer. For one thing, all that transportation and processing with machinery is very energy intensive and has a huge environmental impact. Burning waste has a different impact.

There are small things we can all do to to alleviate plastic waste like 

• Use a ‘bag for life’ or other reusable bag when going shopping, 
• Using reusable storage containers and reusing any unavoidable plastic wrappers to keep food covered in the fridge or freezer rather than buying ‘virgin plastic’ freezer bags or sandwich bags. 
• Use your food pod to dispose of food waste (supplied and collected free by the Council) and choose compostable refuse sacks instead of virgin plastic
• Take discarded electrical goods to the Council’s recycling centre

Governments and local authorities can help but, as consumers, the power is in all our pockets. It’s our purchasing decisions that have the biggest impact. Where possible we should always repair rather than replace and of course only buy products we really need. We should ideally choose products that haven’t had to be shipped from across the globe and ideally those that have been produced near to home. But we can also make better purchasing decisions about waste and recycling:

1. Choose products in metal or glass packaging (easier to recycle) and those that have not just less plastic e.g. paper-wrapped toilet and kitchen rolls but less packaging altogether e.g. laundry sheets or tabs

NB the plastic wrapping around washing and dishwasher tabs doesn’t break down completely and results in microplastics leaching into our watercourses!

1. Avoid products with dark plastic packaging (black, brown green) as this is harder to recycle
2. Ditch single use products that are either made of plastic or packaged in plastic including cosmetics, vapes, straws and plastic tableware, cleaning products, takeaway food sandwiches and soft drinks
3. Please consider buying pre-loved clothing (fast fashion and most shoes and clothing which is not re-purposed via charities – the majority – ends up in landfill).

Don’t stop recycling but do be mindful of how/what we recycle and what other eco-friendly decisions we can make. We only have one earth and we all have a responsibility to each other, to our children and grandchildren to make sure it is here to enjoy for future generations.

And what about your Nu magazine? This will also need to be recycled and we are considering other formats which are less impactful as glossy paper is harder to recycle. But for now please share it with neighbours, family and friends so it can be read by many. And if you have a bookcase that needs wedging or need of a heat mat to protect your table, please consider reusing it for these purposes!