WHY IS IT SO HARD TO RECYCLE PLASTIC?
Bewildering labels. Ever-changing council rules. And, infuriatingly, many of the products you CAN recycle contain small parts you CAN’T
AFTER a home-cooked Sunday lunch with my family, I’m headed to the sofa to relax when my eldest daughter asks what she should do with the leftovers. Not the chicken carcass, but the mini mountain of plastic packaging that remains in my wake. My immediate thought is to tell her to put it all in the recycling bin. Where we live in Kent, we have a green wheelie bin into which everything goes — paper, card, tin and glass. And, of course, plastic. Then, once a fortnight I wheel the bin to the kerbside, smugly congratulating myself that I’ve managed to fill it to the brim. But having spent the past week carefully monitoring the plastic —keeping every scrap of packaging which passed through our household — I’m not so smug any more. What I discovered was shocking. It’s not just the amount of plastic that myself, my wife and three children use, it’s the fact that so much of it still cannot be recycled.
This plastic takes hundreds of years to biodegrade, meaning it lingers long after we’ve enjoyed the food wrapped in it.
Working out what can and can’t go into the green bin remains deeply confusing. Symbols and messages on the labels differ from pack to pack, as does the amount of unnecessary packaging.
No wonder figures released this week show that England has one of the worst recycling rates in the developed world, just 18th in a comparison of the nations which carry out recycling with the greatest efficiency.
Furthermore, the Daily Mail, which is spearheading a campaign to reduce plastic waste, has revealed how widely recycling services vary across the country. Data from recycling charity Wrap shows that more than a quarter (27 per cent) of councils in England refused to take ‘rigid plastics’ — including yoghurt pots, margarine tubs and trays — from the kerbside in 2016-17. Those councils cover close to 7.8 million of England’s 23.1 million households.
In other words, it is hardly surprising that we’re all so confused about what plastic we can and cannot recycle.
Take that Sunday lunch. First up is the empty bag in which two kilos of Waitrose potatoes came in. ‘Film not currently recycled,’ the small print reads. A bad start — and into the rubbish bin that goes. But at least I know what to do with it.
The rest of the meal comes from Marks & Spencer. The tenderstem broccoli is packed in a black tray wrapped in clingfilm — of which there was more than necessary. And clingfilm cannot be recycled. As for the tray itself, a close study of it reveals that familiar triangle of chasing arrows, the recycling logo known as the Mobius Loop, and the mark PP5 (see box).
Going online I discover it means the tray is Type 5 plastic — there are seven types in total — and is made of polypropylene. I crossreference this information against my local council website and discover it will pick up this type of plastic at the kerbside. Not all councils do.
But what an effort! Matters deteriorate further when I move on to the chicken, again from M&S. It came encased beneath a thick plastic wrap, inside which it sits on a plastic corrugated tray and a small, blood- soaked pad. There is no recycling advice on the label other than a small symbol on the back.
It’s not the Mobius Loop but two arrows intertwined — like a yin and yang sign. I always assumed that this meant the product could be recycled.
But when I research it, I learn that it’s known as ‘the Green Dot’ and doesn’t guarantee the product is recyclable or even made from recycled material. In fact it is meaningless in the UK and simply means the manufacturer has made a financial contribution towards the recovery and recycling of packaging in European countries which have a different recycling system to the UK in which recycling is funded by a tax on manufacturers.
As the week passes I spot it on more and more packaging.
On to pudding: apple crumble and ice cream. At least the former’s homemade. The latter is Carte D’Or and on the back, directly next to that Green Dot, the label bears an image of a man dropping something into a bin (this is known as the ‘Tidyman’ and is a reminder not to litter rather than being recyclable). So in the bin it goes.
If that weren’t bad enough, we round off the meal with a coffee and a Ferrero Rocher chocolate.
But as I struggle to gain entry to the box, it strikes me that the
packaging seems to have been specially designed with the fictional ‘ ambassador’ of the famous advert in mind. The filmwrapped chocolates come in a dense plastic case, although I’m told some councils will recycle it.
As the week passes, it’s not just the foodstuffs that drive me mad. I pop in to House of Fraser to pick up a new kitchen knife. It comes in plastic packing of such size and rigidity that it requires an industrial-strength pair of scissors to penetrate.
And talking about excessive packaging, I can’t not mention the six apples I ordered from online delivery service Ocado. Like delicate, glass Christmas baubles, they came in bubble-wrap — which can’t be recycled.
When I shop locally, my greengrocer forgoes plastic in favour of brown paper bags. But at the butcher, while there is less packaging, the sausages and pork chops we eat during the week come on a non-recyclable polystyrene tray wrapped in lots of clingfilm.
Other items are so ubiquitous it would be a real struggle to avoid them. The bread I buy locally or in the supermarket comes in plastic bags, and there is plastic coating on the Strepsils packet I buy for my sore throat.
When I see our family’s weekly packaging piled up in front of me, it dawns on me that much of what I previously thought was recyclable is non-recyclable. Because the reality is, if I don’t do it, it will be separated out when it gets to the recycling facility. And that either way it will end up in landfill or being incinerated.
The week has been a wake-up call for me and shows that while there is currently a big push to reduce the use of plastic bottles — the Mail is backing the introduction of a deposit scheme to cut their use as part of its Turn The Tide on Plastic campaign — this is an issue that touches every aspect of our consumption.
From Sunday lunch through to a niggling cold — and everything in between...