Saturday, October 28, 2017
The crisis facing plastic recycling
There has been controversy in Swansea of late over the council's decision to no longer collect soft plastics for recycling, despite the fact that these materials are capable of being processed. This was an issue I raised at a recent council meeting.
The response I got was very comprehensive. Essentially, the market for recycled plastic has effectively collapsed following China's decision, as reported here, to ban imports of 24 categories of recyclables and solid waste by the end of the year.
Their decision to no longer import yang laji, or “foreign garbage”, applies to plastic, textiles and mixed paper. It will result in China taking a lot less material as it replaces imported materials with recycled material collected in its own domestic market, from its growing middle-class and Western-influenced consumers.
As the article points out China is the dominant market for recycled plastic. It is likely that much of the waste that they currently import, especially the lower grade materials, will have nowhere else to go. This impact will be far-reaching. The 27 countries within the EU27 currently export 87 per cent of the recycled plastic they collect directly, or indirectly (via Hong Kong), to China.
Local councils such as mine need to find alternatives. Plastics collected for recycling, for example could go to energy recovery (incineration). As a fossil-fuel based material they tend to burn extremely well. This means that they might be used to generate electricity and improve energy self-sufficiency, recycled plastic could be used to provide chemicals to the petrochemical sector, fuels to the transport and aviation sectors, food packaging and many other applications. The one place we need to try and avoid sending them is to landfill. This sort of plastic can take between 20 and 1000 years to decompose.
As ever we need to look at the waste hierarchy, a pyramid that defines from top to bottom, the way we should treat materials after use. At the top of this pyramid is the prevention of waste in the first place, followed by minimise, reuse, recycle, energy recovery, disposal. Government needs to legislate to ban certain types of packaging so as to reduce the total amount of waste we generate.
In addition to the charge for carrier bags that has massively reduced their prevalence, deposit and return schemes for plastic bottles (and drink cans) could also incentivise behaviour. Micro-beads, widely used in cosmetics as exfoliants, are now a target as the damage they do becomes increasingly apparent and the UK Government has announced plans to ban their use in some products.
The reliance on one market to solve our waste and recycling problems has left us with a massive headache. However it is also an opportunity to rethink how we deal with waste. to increase the proportion of recycled plastic in our own manufactured products, improve the quality of recovered materials, use recycled material in new ways and find different ways to package our goods so that we produce less waste in the first place.
The response I got was very comprehensive. Essentially, the market for recycled plastic has effectively collapsed following China's decision, as reported here, to ban imports of 24 categories of recyclables and solid waste by the end of the year.
Their decision to no longer import yang laji, or “foreign garbage”, applies to plastic, textiles and mixed paper. It will result in China taking a lot less material as it replaces imported materials with recycled material collected in its own domestic market, from its growing middle-class and Western-influenced consumers.
As the article points out China is the dominant market for recycled plastic. It is likely that much of the waste that they currently import, especially the lower grade materials, will have nowhere else to go. This impact will be far-reaching. The 27 countries within the EU27 currently export 87 per cent of the recycled plastic they collect directly, or indirectly (via Hong Kong), to China.
Local councils such as mine need to find alternatives. Plastics collected for recycling, for example could go to energy recovery (incineration). As a fossil-fuel based material they tend to burn extremely well. This means that they might be used to generate electricity and improve energy self-sufficiency, recycled plastic could be used to provide chemicals to the petrochemical sector, fuels to the transport and aviation sectors, food packaging and many other applications. The one place we need to try and avoid sending them is to landfill. This sort of plastic can take between 20 and 1000 years to decompose.
As ever we need to look at the waste hierarchy, a pyramid that defines from top to bottom, the way we should treat materials after use. At the top of this pyramid is the prevention of waste in the first place, followed by minimise, reuse, recycle, energy recovery, disposal. Government needs to legislate to ban certain types of packaging so as to reduce the total amount of waste we generate.
In addition to the charge for carrier bags that has massively reduced their prevalence, deposit and return schemes for plastic bottles (and drink cans) could also incentivise behaviour. Micro-beads, widely used in cosmetics as exfoliants, are now a target as the damage they do becomes increasingly apparent and the UK Government has announced plans to ban their use in some products.
The reliance on one market to solve our waste and recycling problems has left us with a massive headache. However it is also an opportunity to rethink how we deal with waste. to increase the proportion of recycled plastic in our own manufactured products, improve the quality of recovered materials, use recycled material in new ways and find different ways to package our goods so that we produce less waste in the first place.
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Collection points should be put into position for people to get ,say,10p per bottle (or number of bottles). Then the waste sorting organisations can then isolate those that can be reused by say those with best 'burning power' can go to energy use others to manufacturers. If the will is there it can be sorted out.
In my youth clob days we collected allie cans sent them to a collection point in a supermarket car park on a weekly basis where,by weight, the club got money back which was ploughed back to the club funds. Individual children can be happy to get the money. The debate is on.
In my youth clob days we collected allie cans sent them to a collection point in a supermarket car park on a weekly basis where,by weight, the club got money back which was ploughed back to the club funds. Individual children can be happy to get the money. The debate is on.
I am old enough to remember when Domestos bottles cost 9d, of which 3d was the deposit. If we did it then we can do it now.
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