Recycling alone won’t save the planet – but it does help

Recycling comes rather low on the low waste pyramid, preceded by Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Repurpose and Repair (at least!), and followed only by Rot. As an idea, though, it has always had a good deal more coverage than the others, and there are some good reasons for this.

·      It’s uniquely measurable, which is prized in a world of SMART targets: we can measure the tonnage saved from landfill and the emissions saved from not processing virgin materials. Impossible, by comparison, to measure emissions saved by reducing consumption, or repairing a pair of jeans, or passing something on to someone who now needs something for which we no longer have a use.

·      Many councils also make recycling easy for us to do, just dropping our recycling into a single bin for collection.

·      Its very visibility and popularity makes it an easy entry level activity for those new to ‘eco’ actions.

But what difference does it actually make? At its simplest, recycling certainly reduces the amount of waste sent to landfill, or waste-to-energy plants, or wherever we send stuff we want to be rid of. In many cases, making an item from recycled materials has lower energy requirements than making the same item from new raw materials. Recycling also reduces the demand for those raw materials – so we have fewer bauxite mines, for example, if we recycle aluminium rather than make ‘new’.

Metal has been recycled for millennia – melting it down and reusing it was so much more efficient than expending resources to extract it from ore, with little or no effect on the quality of the metal. Nowadays we often focus on the energy requirement: a tonne of recycled steel uses only 25% of the energy required for new, and recycled aluminium uses only 5%. The carbon emissions saved will obviously vary according to the carbon intensity of the energy source used. It’s definitely worth recycling metal, then, if we can’t reuse it. But we also save mining the raw materials, hence fewer scarring mines, and stop metal going to landfill (an aluminium can takes 80 – 200 years to decompose).

Glass, like metal, can be recycled with no loss of quality. Recycled glass is generally mixed in with raw material, but as recycled glass (known as cullet) has a lower melting temperature, less energy is needed in the process. The use of recycled glass also significantly reduces air and water pollution caused by new glass production. How long does glass take to decompose? Well, we still find Roman glass in good condition, so that’s around 2,000 years and counting. So it’s definitely worth keeping out of landfill.  Nevertheless, reuse saves even more energy – a glass milk bottle can be reused 13 times even before it gets recycled!

Paper also has a long recycling history: the first patent for paper recycling was granted in 1800. Paper recycling energy savings, compared to producing ‘new’ paper, vary widely depending on the quality of paper and the process used to produce ‘new’, but are generally within a range of 40-60%. Paper rots fairly quickly, in under six months.

And then there’s plastics. So many uses, so cheap to produce, so hard to recycle. So many different types. All made from fossil fuels. In terms of energy savings if we can recycle separated types of plastics into reusable forms, using recycled plastic reduces total energy consumption by 79 percent for PET, by 88 percent for HDPE and by 8 percent for PP. (Emissions savings obviously depend on the energy source used.) But we all know that there are myriad problems with the recycling of plastic. One is that the new product is so cheap, making plastic recycling uneconomic, hence the export of plastic waste, theoretically for recycling, but actually for burning and dumping. Another is the plethora of types of plastic: film, bags, bottles, lids, takeaway containers, food packaging ranging from crisp packets to hard meat containers, and all made from different plastic types which need separating before recycling. Plastics require fossil fuels as their raw materials and are estimated to take 100-1000 years to decompose. An ideal candidate for recycling in theory, but given the cheapness of the new product, it’s unlikely ever to be viable. Better by far to look higher up the low waste pyramid and Refuse or Reuse!

There are very visible benefits to most recycling, done properly: energy savings, raw materials savings and landfill savings. There are other complexities to add in: the transportation of recyclables; the type of energy (renewable or fossil fuel) used in both new and recycling processes; the simplicity (or not) of the various recycling processes. Hampshire County Council, for example, will only use recycling facilities within the UK – so hard plastics aren’t currently collected by their kerbside service (apart from plastic bottles). Very annoying if you’ve just moved across the border from West Sussex, who do collect hard plastics, but it does bring you up sharp about what happens to the recycling you blithely tip into the bin. A recycled paper process may use fossil fuel energy, as opposed to the biomass wood shavings of the original papermill. Calculating the true benefits is a lot more complex than straight ‘tonnage saved from landfill’.

Aiming at less waste should have us always looking to start from the top of the pyramid. Can we Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Repair, Repurpose? If not, Recycling of glass, cans, paper and card is easy! For plastics, the mechanics are harder, but there are nevertheless many possibilities.

If you live in West Sussex, you can find out what to include in your recycling bin here  and there’s a ‘what to recycle where’ page here. For EHDC, just over the border, your kerbside collection items are here.

There are a number of other schemes around, run by retailers, community organisations and charities. In Petersfield, PeCAN have just produced a very up to date recycling directory, Chichester’s Eco Chi website has a less up to date, but still useful, zero waste page, and the Recycle Now website has some pointers for Midhurst, although again not up to date. These things change frequently, so maintaining a complete and accurate list is difficult. If you know of other lists/facilities, please let us know!

Another thing about recycling: don’t be guilty of ‘wishcycling’. Only pop in your bin those clean, dry things that you know are accepted, otherwise you risk reducing the value of the material. Pizza boxes, for instance are a no-no because they often are covered with food debris (I compost ours), as is heat resistant glass such as Pyrex because it has a higher melting point than ordinary glass (obvious really!).

And please Close the Loop, and buy recycled where you can!