Tuesday 28th October 2008
Quality is the Key to Staying in Business
The Campaign for Real Recycling today commented on the effects of the predicted economic downturn on the recycling industry. Following WRAP's international markets event last week, Andy Moore, campaign coordinator, said:
"We are pleased to note that Defra recognises that material quality is key. Markets for low quality material are indeed now going to be squeezed as export markets collapse. But this effect was widely predicted and we will always be subject to such market whims unless we aim at greater self-reliance in the UK.
"To create more resilience for the future we now need an incentive to invest in collection systems that prioritise quality in order to feed an expansion in UK reprocessing. To begin with this means transparency of material journey and destination, especially for material through MRFs. Defra needs to do more than just call for more interest in a voluntary scheme: it needs to require transparency in future.
"Meanwhile it will be interesting to see what happens to the low quality material currently resulting from single-stream, compacted collections. The media have been constantly looking for stories of collected recyclables being landfilled. If they start to find such instances as a result of lost export markets, all recycling, quality oriented or not, could be tarred with the same brush. Both business and the environment will be the losers."
Information for Editors:
1. The Campaign for Real Recycling wants central government and local authorities to act urgently to improve the quality of materials collected for recycling in the UK. Real recycling is about maximising the economic, environmental and social benefits of recycling for everyone, from the local council tax payer to the global re-processing industry. Our concern is that collection systems that gather a range of different materials in one bag or bin and then compact them could permanently undermine the environmental and financial benefits of recycling. Our campaign aims to influence local authority policy and practice, and build consensus within the UK of the economic and environmental importance of highly separated collections.
2. Campaign for Real Recycling supporters:
|
