Get everyone on board to boost recycling

At a time when local authority recycling figures are decreasing it’s unhelpful to find the national press talking about a Christmas recycling shambles, especially when they use sensationalist language that has little foundation in truth. Some of the points raised in popular media pieces are relevant; such as quality, communications, and consistency, but language used around these points is somewhat wide of the mark. The beginning of the year sees local authorities and reprocessors inundated with larger volumes of materials and all have a vested interest in recycling as much as possible.

According to WRAP, 20% of the whole year’s sales are made at Christmas and last year we consumed close to 300,000 tonnes of cardboard packaging. The increase in internet shopping also means a whole lot of extra paper and cardboard boxes being delivered to households all around the country. So we’re talking about an overwhelming amount of paper and card going into household waste streams, alongside other materials, that all needs recycling.

With the extra tonnage of cardboard packaging in the waste stream we’re proud to support WRAP’s paper and cardboard campaign that runs until February, helping to recycle as much as possible to ensure this vital resource doesn’t go to waste.

Visibility

The increased volumes means greater visibility, hence the media interest, but it is frustrating that news stories focus on sensationalism rather than the reality. While recycling tips were made within the Daily Mail’s lead article, ‘Christmas Recycling Shambles’ one wonders whether people read these past the over-the-top headline and scare mongering first couple of lines.

At DS Smith we welcome WRAP’s new recycling guidelines to tackle confusion in UK households around what items can and cannot be recycled. Recycling has to be made easy and clear, concise and consistent communications gives us the best chance of increasing both the quantity and quality of recycling. If we get the right framework then not only will we recycle, but we will recycle more, and we will recycle better.

But we need to get everyone on board.

So here is a startling fact; across all materials, excluding cartons, up to 89% of residents are including items in the recycling which are not currently recyclable. Such a high percentage presents recyclers with a serious contamination issue, and that means that materials meant for recycling risk not being recycled at all of contamination levels are too high. That is when us as residents get really upset, when we perceive that materials we separated out for recycling end up in waste-to-energy plants or, even worse, landfill sites.

Consistency

Recently we attended the annual Local Authority Recycling Advisory Committee event, and spoke around the theme of ‘recycling your residents will love’ – recycling made easy for residents, providing quality materials for recyclers to reprocess, and therefore ensuring materials intended for recycling actually ends up in recycling.

WRAP’s recycling guidelines have been developed to help bring about consistency and reduce householder confusion in recycling. Consumer testing revealed a low level of awareness amongst consumers of many items that are currently not recyclable and highlighted a number of items that are often not recycled due to a lack of knowledge or confusion.

By adopting these guidelines and sharing them across the recycling ‘supply cycle’, we can all recognise a series of potential benefits. They provide a framework for a more consistent approach to how local authorities communicate with residents. Better and more consistent communications, in turn, will lead to less contamination and better quality recycling.

There are also clear financial improvements that the guidelines can help to create. Higher levels of quality recycling, and subsequent lower levels of contamination, will not only help to reduce collection and reprocessing costs, they can also provide increased value opportunities – the better the quality, the more valuable the commodity. Improved quality recycling will be more resilient to well documented fluctuations in a global market for secondary raw materials. It’s simple economics.

Mathew Prosser will be speaking at letsrecycle.com’s Collections Conference in London on 29 March. Click here to find out more details.