Tag: Plastics

Yesterday, we heard concerns from the National Audit Office that a significant amount of items recycled in the UK could in fact end up in landfill abroad.“

Most people are unaware that most of our recycling goes abroad,” said Mary Creagh, chair of the Environmental Audit Committee of MPs. 

n the UK we do not have the infrastructure to handle all our recycling so some of it is distributed to other countries to be treated. This means some of our recycling could end up in landfill without us knowing, but does not take away from the fact that a lot of recycling is still processed correctly overseas.     

It is also important to highlight that a lot of the UK’s recycling is in fact processed in the UK and that you can find out, through your local council where your recycling really ends up. 

For example, in several London Boroughs, including Hackney, Camden and Waltham Forest, all recycling sacks are sorted and processed within London itself at Bywaters recycling facility. 

What’s more, the UK is making impressive strides in recycling, shown by continual increases in our recycling rates. Last year we achieved a 64% improvement rate surpassing the 55% target set by the EU.

There are also simple steps we can take to reduce our plastic waste and help this issue. With Plastic Free July in full swing, we are encouraging our members to avoid single-use plastics and re-use disposable items wherever possible. Check out our recent blog post for tips on how to achieve this. 

Through our Recycling Rewards schemes we reward residents for recycling and reusing, encouraging everyone to reduce their household waste. We aim to increase awareness around recycling, as well as motivate residents to recycle more, by using rewards, gamification, an innovative online platform, web app and communications campaign. 

In Camden, thanks to our Camden Recycling Rewards, residents in the London Borough of Camden are recycling 10% more of their household items than they did last year. For more information or to request a case study please get in touch at [email protected]. 

On the 5^th June World Environment Day focused on bringing your people together to beat plastic pollution.

Being so cheap and easy to produce plastic is found everywhere in our day to day lives, from the packaging around our food to the tiny microbeads that are found in our clothes and released every time we put on a wash. 51 trillion pieces of plastic are currently polluting our sea and although it is hard to visualise such an immense quantity the impact this is having on our marine wildlife is clear.

Millions of sea creatures are harmed every year when they mistakenly consume our plastic waste and we can thank the BBC’s Blue Planet for bringing this fact to our attention. It is easy to feel helpless staring at our TV screens begging animals to stop eating plastic, so instead why don’t we take action?

Exciting steps have already been taken at a global level. India has set their goal of eliminating all single-use plastics by 2022, with many other countries following their lead, including the 50 which have committed to the UN’S Clean Seas campaign. However, our own daily choices are also important in creating the change. 

As part of our Jump Engagement Programmes we are asking employees to make pledges to reduce their plastic use. For example, pledging to only use their reusable coffee cups when buying their morning coffee fix, or using reusable water bottles instead of buying disposable plastic ones. 

Following a successful pilot at RBS in 2016, we saved 500,000 disposable coffee cups by encouraging reusable alternatives, and this continues to increase. We are also inviting our members to get creative by upcycling old plastic products to make something new. How about converting your old yoghurt pots into new seedling trays? 

By encouraging your people to make responsible choices when it comes to every day plastic use, we can generate big savings that help you towards your environmental targets. If you’d like to hear more about our Jump programmes, please get in touch at [email protected]. 

Bit by bit we aim to leave our throw-away culture behind us and clean up our oceans. As World Environment day taught us, if you can’t reuse it, refuse it! 

This week, Michael Gove announced that the UK will introduce a plastic bottle deposit return scheme (DRS) to increase recycling rates and reduce the amount of litter polluting our land and seas.

The scheme will work by using a “reverse vending” process, in which consumers are refunded money for returning their drinks bottles back to retailers. Research by the parliamentary Environmental Audit Committeefound countries with deposit return schemes tended to recycle between 80% and 95% of their plastic bottles. It is hoped that the scheme will be able to boost England’s stagnating recycling rate, which is 57% for plastic bottles, compared to other European nations who are recording recycling rates for bottles at 98%.

While the introduction of the DRS has been hailed as a success by many environmental groups, some troubling questions are starting to emerge about how the scheme will be implemented and how it will impact current systems in the UK. 

Can our infrastructure cope? 

The UK is considerably more densely populated than other the European nations using DRS, which poses technical challenges for implementation. Experts have warned that there are not currently enough recycling plants to process the increased amount of plastic that would need to be processed on home soil. Local councils have also expressed concerns that implementing a deposit return scheme on top of current waste and recycling systems could undercut their revenues, which currently benefit from plastic recycling collections. PET bottles are worth around £130 a tonne, which is a major income stream for local councils. 

Are retailers on board? Major retailers are largely on board with the DRS, but some issues have been raised over how the scheme will work in practice and a lack of overall brief. Many in the retail industry feel there is no clear direction on how users will interact with the scheme, such as the fact that different strategies will be needed for urban areas and more sparsely populated areas. There is also no clear consensus as to which system people should favour – their kerbside collection or the DRS? 

Will the scheme reducer litter? 

Litter reduction has been cited as one of the key aims of the deposit return scheme, but there is little evidence that the scheme will actually achieve this. Reducing litter and encouraging recycling on the go is a notoriously difficult behaviour to address. A DEFRA report has shown that monetary or other rewards are unlikely to encourage consumers to use recycling bins outside of their house. A German study published four years after its deposit scheme was introduced also found no evidence of litter reduction. 

Can the scheme succeed? 

The positive news is that the DRS has come at a time when people are increasingly aware of the dangers of plastics and the need to avoid throwing them in the bin or leave them lying around without properly disposing of them. Our ‘plastic problem’ has become a topical issue, thanks to the Blue Planet II series and various social media campaigns, which have led to some major retailers making pledges to reduce the amount of plastics they produce or use on site. This political climate suggests the DRS would receive high levels of engagement and correspondingly high plastic recycling rates. 

If you’ve heard about China’s Plastic Ban, you’re probably wondering how it will affect plastic recycling the UK…

Dispelling the myths 

The news that China will no longer be taking the UK’s plastic waste has triggered questioning over our domestic recycling processes and the negative media coverage has left UK residents worrying that the plastic they recycle won’t actually be reprocessed. But, a closer look into what is happening on the ground in the UK recycling industry shows positive developments as a result of the ban on exporting plastic to China coming into action this January (2018). 

New momentum 

While the ban has been portrayed as a blow to the UK by the media, it has actually been branded as “good news” by many in the industry because it has forced a rethink of the UK’s current mixed recycling system. The increased demand for domestic plastic reprocessing services has led to more plans to open recycling plants opening in the UK. Last month, waste management firm Panda, announced it will open a recycling facility for waste plastic films in the UK. The plant will process 10-15,000 tonnes of plastic film a year, to be sold back to supermarkets. What’s more, for some UK-based plastic re-processors, the increased pressure from the government on producers has led to an increased demand for their services. One UK-based HDPE plastic recycler said: “In all honesty we haven’t seen any drop in the use of plastics. If anything, particularly for recycled plastic, demand is growing. The press around plastic has done nothing other than stimulate lots of activity for us.”

New markets 

Many experts in the industry are also seeing the Chinese plastic import ban as positive because it has resulted in new markets opening up, and “a larger pool to choose from”. New markets that are taking plastic for reprocessing are in Eastern Europe and south east Asian countries such as Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia. The result of these new markets has been an actual increase in the amount of plastic exported for reprocessing. Figures show that 28,354 tonnes of plastic waste were accepted or exported in January 2018, which is an increase on the amount exported for the same period last year.

How much did we send to China in the first place? 

Many local authorities have not been affected by the ban, as they have never exported any plastic waste to China in the first place. In January, the North London Waste Authority released details of the plastic waste they process and how it is reprocessed. Figures from their 2016/17 collections show that only 13% of household waste they collect is plastic, which amounted to nearly 75,000 tonnes. Of that collected plastic, almost 100% was sent to UK re-processors.

What does this mean for me?

So the good news is – there is plenty of reason to keep recycling plastics and you should see no changes to how you normally recycle. Make sure you’re up to date with the latest guidance on what and cannot be recycled in your area by checking with your Local Council or the Recycle Now website, Plastics are processed differently by different councils, so always make sure to check before you chuck! 

This week we heard that the UK government is considering adopting a plastic bottle scheme, similar to one used in Norway. The scheme would see people who return their plastic bottles refunded the equivalent of 10p to 25p, depending on the size. 

In Norway the scheme is responsible for recycling 97% of bottles in the country and has massively reduced plastic litter in the environment and seas. Experts claim that local authorities could save up to £35 million ever year, if the deposit return scheme were to be introduced. A report based on the data from eight local councils with varying recycling rates found that councils could make savings of between £60,000 and £500,000 each, due to reduced littering and landfill charges. But some local councils have expressed concerns that a deposit return scheme would lose them money, by undercutting their income stream from kerbside collections. Nonetheless, there is a clear problem with plastic waste in the UK and greater incentives to recycle plastic are needed. Only 57% plastic bottles get recycled in the UK, compared to Germany and Denmark which both have deposit return schemes and see more than 90% of plastic bottles returned. Plastic pollution also affects UK oceans, with a third of the fish caught in UK waters, including cod, haddock and mackerel, found to contain plastic. Figures from 2016 show that one million plastic bottles were bought a minute around the world, and this number is expected to increase by 20% by 2021. Of this number, fewer than half were recycled and just 7% were turned into new bottles – while most ended up in landfill or in the ocean.  With the plastic problem now receiving increasing amounts of media attention, it looks likely that we will see increasing efforts from the government to tackle the issue.

PM Theresa May promises that the UK will become international leaders on environmental issues, as she unveils a 25 year environmental plan. 

With plastic pollution at ‘near permanent levels of contamination to the natural environment’, down to humans having produced 8.3bn tonnes of the material since the 1950s, it’s fitting that the plans focus heavily on plastic waste. Proposed policies include plastic free aisles in supermarkets, extending the levy on plastic bags, increased funding for research and a tax on takeaway containers. 

After the hugely successful 5p levy on plastic bags, which saw 70% more shoppers switch to reusable shopping bags, May has promised to extend the levy to smaller shops. In a similar vein, we may soon see the levy charged on single-use plastic takeaway containers.

Another plan is to encourage supermarkets to introduce aisles without any plastic packaging, where products would instead be sold loose and collected in your own reusable storage containers. These plans are welcomed by UK consumers after a survey in July 2017 found that nine out of 10 of us demand more plastic free aisles. When comparing the choice to go ‘plastic free’ with dietary preferences like ‘dairy-free’ and ‘fat-free’, where alternative options are widely available, consumers are asking why they don’t get as much of a say about packaging. A number of plastic free supermarkets are already paving the way for zero-waste lifestyles – check out these examples to see how it’s already being done: Bulk Market, London; The Zero Waste Shop, Totnes; and In Gredients, Texas.

With a global outlook, the new plans also outline a new ‘plastics innovation’ research fund and aid to support developing nations in dealing with their plastic problems.

Although environmental groups welcome the ambition of the 25 year plan, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn have voiced concerns about the proposals. The biggest criticism being about the lack of immediate action.

The plans aim to stop all avoidable plastic waste by 2042 but the worry is that this may be far too late. The plastic we have already produced will last for hundreds or thousands of years in landfill, in our waterways or the oceans – where impacts of this pollution are devastating. Studies show that 90% of sea birds have eaten plastic and one in three fish caught in the Channel contain pieces of plastic. 

While you wait for the war on plastics to take action, there are plenty of ways to fight plastic waste yourself. At Local Green Points we are engaging residents from across the UK in waste minimisation and we recommend that you:

1) Shop smart – by thinking about the products you buy, you can reduce plastic waste every time you shop. Opt for loose products or those with the least packaging possible.

2) Recycle what you can – lots of plastics can be recycled and turned into something new, preventing the need for production of more raw materials. Check with your local council or the Recycling Locator to see what can be recycled near you.

3) Clean up the mess – no matter where you live, there will be a way you can help clear up plastic waste in your area. You could volunteer for a beach clean, river clear out or local litter pick and your efforts could benefit countless ecosystems.