Recycling and the dragon economy
A government think-tank says there’s no problem with shipping plastic bottles to China for recycling. Could it be right? Giles Crosse finds out
Times have never been so good for UK recycling - we’ll save 250,000 tonnes of plastic bottles from landfill by the end of 2008. Even better, overall growth in packaging waste has finally been halted - a bonus considering there are 0.5 per cent more of us around every year using bottles and bags.
But even though there’s now more recycling for UK businesses to turn back into useful products, over the past ten years exports of used paper have risen from 470,000 tonnes to 4.7 million tonnes. Our policy makers say it’s a good thing to ship it to China or India. So what’s really going on with our recycling?
Counting the carbon
It’s all about carbon emissions - recent science suggests this is the top way to truly judge what’s good for the environment. The Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) guides government plans on recycling.
WRAP have recently discovered that selling the UK’s used plastic bottles or paper for recycling in China can actually save carbon. Surprisingly, shipping these materials more than 10,000 miles produces less CO2 than sending them to landfill at home or using brand new materials instead.
Because of trade imbalances between the UK and the Far East, most container ships return to China empty, but still produce CO2 along the way. If you take this into account, the transport emissions are smaller – less than one-tenth of the overall CO2 saved by recycling over there.
Without our recycling, China would have to use brand new materials in its manufacturing.
Steve Creed from WRAP wants to avoid this: “In addition to reducing carbon emissions, world resources are being conserved by substituting virgin materials for recovered materials. Getting as much as we can from resources we have already extracted is at the heart of resource efficiency.”
Truth or lies?
A lot of recycling campaigners agree with WRAP. Mike Webster is senior consultant for waste reduction charity Waste Watch. “Lots of our goods are manufactured in China. That is where the demand for recycled materials currently exists so it makes sense that it is sent back there,” he says.
“In an ideal world, there would be such great demand for paper or plastic in the UK we would not need to export our recycling. But currently, that demand does not exist.”
Even Friends of the Earth (FOE) accept there is a place for overseas recycling, if it’s done correctly. “We accept there's a place for export, as it’s a circular economy. We import a lot so it makes sense to give the Chinese the resources they can use (our recycling) to make things we'll buy.” says Michael Warhurst.
He also points out that recycling must be done to high environmental and social standards, and workers treated well: “If we recycle here, we can control this.”
Real world recycling
There are worries that WRAP’s thinking doesn’t work in the real world - recycling law makes it illegal to ship waste unless it’s being recycled or recovered. The Environment Agency regulates home recycling, but has no jurisdiction abroad, so there is no knowing if materials are really recycled?
Councils too have a duty to check recycling is done correctly, but one in ten don’t know where their recycling ends up. Others are bound up in red tape.
“46 councils had no idea where their recycling goes,” explains councillor Paul Bettison, from the Local Government Association (LGA). “Some councils have contracts pre-dating Environment Agency rules, explaining they must use registered recyclers who guarantee where recycling is going.”
Tracing the journey of a plastic bottle from your doorstep to the Far East is hard. Councils collect waste and pass it on to waste companies for recycling. Some waste firms won’t provide details of where materials go, claiming commercial confidentiality. Others use waste brokers in the Far East, making the paper trail yet tougher to follow.
Now the LGA is asking the Environment Agency to pressurise companies that won’t play ball. It is writing to every council leader in England and Wales, stressing the need for better accountability.
Enforcing the rules
The Environment Agency (EA) has checked more than 100 UK recycling facilities in the last year, seeing how recycling is sorted and where it’s going. Nine companies have been prosecuted since 2006.
“We’re upping our efforts to make sure things are done properly, both at ports here and in areas like Holland where we’ve addressed difficulties,” says EA head of waste Liz Parkes.
“Now the quality of the recycling leaving our shores is improving, but there’s no room for complacency,” she says. She believes that tax payers have a right to demand to know where recycling is going.
“Recycling is a brand, and people make a genuine effort to do it, it's important, so councils' behaviour when they don't even know what's really happening to your kerbside box has a really poor knock on effect,” explains FOE’s Michael Warhurst.
What’s next?
Improving recycling in the UK is the best way to make sure it’s done properly. WRAP has helped build UK recycling capacity to a turnover of around £2 billion in 2007. “More could be done to boost the reprocessing industry at home, with tax incentives for new plants,” argues Mike Webster.
Environmental campaigners want to see more funding for agencies like WRAP to help reassure the public and increase recycling. But the government has cut WRAP budgets by 30 per cent since 2007.
“The government has let householders down by massively cutting funding to support the UK's recycling industry and failing to ensure that exported materials are properly recycled,” says Michael Warhurst.
“The government must step up its efforts to boost recycling to help us to get the most out of the world's finite natural resources - and make sure that our waste doesn't mount up here or on the other side of the world.”
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