UK recycling hampered by weight-based targets

A new report from Forum for the Future argues that packaging made from plastic and aluminium make little contribution to local authorities' weight-based targets, and so are not being prioritised.

The report claims that the increasing tendency to export waste materials abroad for reprocessing is the result of council recycling services favouring heavier materials like paper.

” Exporting recovered bottles as far as China is not a sustainable solution.“
– Jonathon Porritt, Forum for the Future

The report said the bias towards collecting heavy materials for recycling “has led to questionable outcomes”, including the export of over a million tonnes of recovered paper to China “because there is too much of it for UK markets” while recovered aluminium has to be imported “to keep the UK aluminium recycling industry going”.

Jonathon Porritt, who is programme director of the Forum and advises the government on sustainable development, said: “There is a strong risk of good work being undermined if policy isn't rooted in a real understanding of sustainability and driven by the need to get maximum value from packaging materials with the lowest impact on the environment.

“Exporting recovered bottles as far as China is not a sustainable solution,” he added.

Councils should be set “ambitious material-based targets”, the report recommended, and should be recycling 50% of municipal waste by 2010 and 70% by 2015. In order to reach such recycling rates, the Forum said councils should be given the power to charge households for the amount of residual waste they produce.

Tetra-Pak
The report has been funded by the packaging manufacturer Tetra Pak, a company which has an interest in improving the recycling rate of lighter packaging materials because of its producer responsibility obligations under the Packaging Directive.

” It is madness for targets to drive recycling of material for which there is no good market.“
– Mike Ansell, Tetra Pak UK
In the UK, only 2% of the kind of liquid cartons produced by Tetra Pak are recycled, while the European average is 30% according to Tetra Pak.

The company's managing director, Mike Ansell, said: “It is madness for targets to drive recycling of material for which there is no good market. As long as targets are tonnage-based, lightweight packaging like cartons will always be at a disadvantage.”

The Forum said that the current packaging waste recovery note system of packaging producer responsibility “does not create sufficient and reliable income for the required investment in recycling infrastructure”.

Recommendations
Other recommendations in the Forum for the Future report included the introduction of bans on the landfilling of recyclable or compostable materials, an increase of 6 per tonne each year on the Landfill Tax and its reform into a waste disposal tax.