What happens after you recycle responsibly?
‘‘A journalist sent to investigate found a big pile of plastic waste dumped outside a warehouse
After I wrote about recycling last week, a reader emailed me a link to a very interesting short film about what happens to soft plastic once it’s been deposited in a recycling bin at Tesco.
It was a Bloomberg investigation which placed trackers in two different types of plastic bags before dropping them in Tesco recycling bins. Their journey revealed a very circuitous route of exporters, brokers and contractors that, as the reporter concludes, looks “less like the circular economy and more like a game of passthe-buck”.
First, they made their way to the docks and boarded a boat to the Netherlands. Once back on land, they passed through Germany before reaching Poland, where both pieces of plastic ended up at exactly the same place – a large recycling facility in Zielona Gora.
Here, they were sorted and then one of them – a snack wrapper (lentil puffs) – began moving again, heading to a tiny town called Poniatowa and a company called Stella Pack. This is a plastic bag maker. They have a facility that can turn old soft plastic into new soft plastic.
But they also have a way to dispose of the plastic they can’t use, which is an onsite incinerator. It provides energy for their factory. Incinerating plastic, which releases harmful gases, is a crime in the UK, but in Europe it’s a grey area.
The snack wrapper stayed put, so it was impossible to tell whether it was turned into new soft plastic or used as fuel.
The other tracker made its way to an industrial estate in southern Turkey, with no sign of a plastic waste processing plant. A journalist was sent to investigate and she found a big pile of plastic waste dumped outside a warehouse.
It was quite depressing if you are trying to dispose of your plastic responsibly.
The Bloomberg report said that a statement from Tesco said it was committed to minimising single-use plastic and ensuring everything the supermarket giant uses can be recycled as part of a closed loop.
But the reality is that despite all the good intentions, the majority of waste soft plastic is either going to be incinerated or buried in landfill.