Dear Sir,
     Rubbish editorial?

Is your editorial “Rubbish answers” (2.1.09) actually trying to discourage readers from recycling by concluding that “Britain is alone in Europe in trying to recycle so much.”  As a professional recycler I have to ask, if 85% of what goes in our bins is recyclable or compostable, and at best estimates we capture only around 33% of this,  why on earth are we even talking about incineration (re-named energy from waste)? Our recycling still lags far behind many parts of Europe – let’s sort that out first.

You are right to assert that “we have become better at collecting waste” but miss a crucial stage in the process by, in the same sentence, continuing “but not at treating it once it has been bundled up.”  That is the problem - we are increasingly collecting our materials in the wrong way and have ended up bundling rubbish, not individual materials. We have then tried to find buyers for this mixed material masquerading as paper, or glass, or plastics etc. It is not a recycling crisis, it is a quality crisis. The ‘paper mountains’ that were once sent abroad are infact paper plus goodness only knows what else –plastic, glass, food waste, nappies all mixed in.  UK paper mills actually IMPORT waste paper from Europe because they cannot get good quality sources from here in the UK. The Chinese simply got fed up with buying low quality material from a relatively small supplier.

The quality problem has also hit glass – there is actually a shortage of glass that can be made back into bottles and jars in the UK.  Again this is because of the low quality of material emerging once it has gone through what you quite rightly describe as overly ‘complex collection services’. Nowhere else in Europe, for example, does anybody send the glass they collect to road aggregate.

We have arrived at this point not, as you imply, down to a lack of re-processing capacity in the UK, but because too many local authorities were given poor advice and chose recycling schemes that took no consideration of the end market for the materials they were collecting. The problem is not universal.  Where materials are collected carelessly, all mixed together in wheelie bins or sacks where they contaminate one another - and are then thrown in the back of a traditional rubbish truck that crushes them up to maximize payload – you get the problems and the resulting waste mountains you describe.

By contrast, local authorities who invested in systems that maintained the quality of the materials collected are still finding buyers for those materials.  Limiting the range of materials collected in each container, or better still having them sorted by trained collectors as they are put onto the trucks, maintains material quality. Hundreds (a small majority still) of local councils continue to use well established kerbside sorting systems, often in partnership with community sector organizations providing excellent value for money and producing a product re-processors can actually use.

Your call for ‘Britain to develop a bigger domestic recycling industry of its own’ should be listened to by government; but will only work if those charged with collecting our ‘waste’ supply materials that can actually be used.  That truck with the guys sorting your materials while still in your street is infact the best system around – chances are those materials are being recycled responsibly – recycling can be real – there are still many good authorities out there.

Mal Williams

Chief Executive Officer
Cylch-Wales Community Recycling Network
113, Cathedral Rd
Cardiff
CF11 9PH
Tel +44(0)2920 649750