So, there’s this EU target for recycling. And we’re not going to hit it. Boo hoo. But here’s where it gets interesting.
SITA also argues that hitting the targets is becoming ever trickier as households are generally using – and therefore throwing away – less glass and paper, two of the most commonly recycled kinds of rubbish.
SITA said this was especially problematic because local authorities measured recycling volumes by weight.
“Two of the biggest and heaviest components, paper and glass, are in structural decline, driven by a chronic decline in newspaper readership as we consume our news by screen rather by papers. Glass is being substituted increasingly by plastic bottles,” it said.
Obviously, any recycling system will be set up to deal with the most common items first. Those used to be paper and glass. But we now have a structural shift away from using those two materials. Meaning that the total weight of waste is falling. Which is, you would think, a good thing by the standards used to measure these things.
But no! Waste is declining but the proportion of waste that is recycled is also falling. And that’s a bad thing.
The fall will make it almost certain that Britain will miss tough EU targets of recycling half of all household waste by 2020.
…… the fall, which risks the UK having to pay millions of pounds in fines.
Yep. The amount of waste falls and the EU then fines us because we’re creating less waste.
We’ve just done the voting, probably time to start shooting.