Too much garbage is the problem
written by roland, February 07, 2007

firstly, i would like to say this is an excellent blog and i welcome the good work of your institute in policy making in the UK. thank you!

i agree that there are clear environmental benefits to recycle certain materials (such as aluminium) over others (such as paper and card). i also accept that the drive for recycling can somewhat lead people to miss the main problem, namely the waste being generated in the first place. i would say that generally recycling our waste is much better for the environment than burning it or putting it into holes in the ground. there should be no attempt to make political gains by trying to distort that clear message.

the point is that recycling should never be a replacement for more environmentally sound solutions such as not creating the waste in the first place either through choosing products with less packaging, refusing to accept extra packaging at shops, leaving excess packaging at the shops for them to deal with, making use out of any waste materials at home thus negating the need to purchase additional products for the same use (such as using glass jars for holding pencils, keeping newspapers for cleaning windows, keeping old paper for making notes/taking telephone calls, old clothes for rags, plastic bags as bin liners to name but a few examples!!).

The environmental campaigner and Nobel Peace Prize Winner, Wangari Maathai often cites a Buddhist term called 'mottainai' which means "Receive the resources with respect , receive resources with gratitude. Do not waste resources'. She notes that the Japanese, for example, are losing that old tradition of theirs because they are becoming very affluent. This is precisely the same for us. im not aware of many politicians brave enough to advocate any curtailing of our growth in wealth!

For me the bottom line is that I think the more people engage with recycling the more we will align ourselves with our individual impacts. If somehow getting the appetite for recycling can get richer countries such as ours back on track to a term more familiar to the UK of 'waste not want not' , then i think any environmental harm caused by recycling certain materials in certain circumstances will be hugely worthwhile in the long run.

Finally, i am not clear whether you are for or against materials being sent abroad to be recycled. I would have thought you would be supportive of bona fide uk export trade such as this. if there is a demand for recyclable material in another country that is clean and separated and they are willing to pay a good price for the material then surely it is good business. often material is sent back to countries such as china on boats that would otherwise be empty (having dropped off all the imports from these countries!) so there is no issue of additional environmental impacts from the transport side. I understand that waste sent abroad for recycling has led some unscrupulous firms to include unsegregated black bag waste but the point is that is an illegal practice which the environment agency will inevitably crack down on. there are plenty of illegal activities in most areas which do not lead to calls for the market to be closed! equally, i understand that the working conditions of some reprocessing plants are unsatisfactory but again closing the door on the trade outright can not be a good thing. isnt it better to insist on effecting change through trade such as we can see happening with some clothing companies which are finally leading to long awaited improvements in worker protection in some cases. at the same time many of us are more than willing to purchase our electronic goods from these countries without a regard to how it was made - let's not use recycling as an easy target for political point scoring please!