Waste: Recycling needs fiscal support of UK government

Ellin said the UK does not have enough plastic and paper processing plants to deal with the amount of waste the country produces.

“We’ve got the opportunity now for the UK government to give us the tools we need to invest in internal UK infrastructure,” Ellin said. “But it’s got to be government-led and there has to be a whole supply-chain approach, where everyone takes responsibility — from the designers, manufacturers and retailers through to local councils and processors.”

Coffee cups a pain

The Simply Cups recycling project, a partnership between environmental company Closed Loop UK and waste management enterprise Simply Waste Solutions, is the first in Britain to add value to the disposable cup.

Coffee cups are the scourge of the waste industry in the UK. They are difficult and expensive to recycle because they require a specialized facility to separate the plastic lining from the paper outer section of the cup. Before the establishment of such a place five years ago, almost all of the 2.5 billion coffee cups that Britons discard each year were either buried or burned.

By bringing together stakeholders and orchestrating a system in which cups are collected, pulped, and made into new products, Simply Cups has ensured that 1 percent of those discarded cups are now recycled. It is a drop in the ocean, but a start, said Peter Goodwin, director of Closed Loop UK.

Closed Loop initiated a similar operation that helped take plastic bottle recycling rates in the UK from 3 percent in 2001 to almost 50 percent today.

According to Goodwin, these operations are what Britain urgently needs, especially now that China has stopped accepting foreign trash.

“What the Chinese announcement has highlighted is the real capacity gap that we have in the UK,” Goodwin said.

Cheaper recycling options abroad have led to the closure of hundreds of paper recycling mills in the UK since the 1970s.

One of Closed Loop’s plastic recycling centers had to shut down four years ago, when low oil prices made new plastic a cheaper option for manufacturers, and Britain exported record levels of scrap plastic to China as a result.

‘Majority’ put in landfills

“Stuff is only recycled in the UK where there are systems in place that create value,” Goodwin said. “The waste that doesn’t have a system — which is the majority — is put into landfills, incinerated, or exported.”

Plastic waste is a hot topic in the UK. The issue of global plastic pollution reached a wide audience through the BBC documentary Blue Planet II. And media reports on the China ban let Britons know just how much of their waste went from their homes to other countries. A quarter of the scrap plastic sent from the UK to China originated in households.

Ellin of the UK Recycling Association said the government had been “asleep at the wheel” before the debate in the media and among the public.

China began phasing in waste restrictions four years ago, before stopping most plastic and paper last July. Ellin wrote a letter to the government in September calling for urgent action in light of the ban.

In November, UK Environment Secretary Michael Gove was criticized when he told the Environmental Audit Committee he had “not given sufficient thought” to China’s looming ban. Two months later, Gove handed out reusable coffee cups to members of the British cabinet.

“I recognize that China’s decision will cause some issues in the short term for recycling in the UK,” Gove said in Parliament. “We will continue to work closely with industry, the Environment Agency, local authorities and all interested parties to manage those issues.”

This month, UK Prime Minister Theresa May delivered her first major speech on the environment, saying the government will target the nation’s “throwaway culture” and eliminate single-use plastics by 2042.

Media reports on the China ban let Britons know just how much of their waste went from their homes to other countries. A quarter of the scrap plastic sent from the UK to China originated in households.