Are we doing enough to recycle plastic at home?

Are we doing enough to recycle plastic at home?

17 October 2012

AS a ‘green’ person I am constantly appalled by the amount of waste we generate and there is often no option but to throw it into the black bin for ultimate disposal to landfill.

Although the recommended approach is to ‘Reduce, Re-use, Recycle’, a trip to the supermarket often generates enough packaging waste to fill a standard swing bin.

Reduction is, of course, possible but one has to be inventive to avoid much of the packaging associated with the items we buy. Re-use is great for second-hand clothes, wood, envelopes, scrap paper, etc, but re-using plastic packaging is more difficult. That leaves recycling, which is often the only means other than incineration by which we can mitigate the environmental impact of packaging waste.

During a recent trip to Norway I was surprised to see that my brother-in-law, who lives near Trondheim, assiduously gathers all household plastic waste and puts it into a large plastic bag for collection by his local council. This includes not only plastic bottles but also plastic bags, plastic film, wrapping material, bubble wrap, plant pots, etc. He also puts other types of waste, such as paper, waste food, metal and cans, glass bottles, into separate containers and these too are collected by the council and recycled or composted.

Curious to find out how waste is dealt with, I paid a visit to the Steinkjer Civic Amenity Site (CAS), which is a centralised facility for waste disposal, and I was shown around by Ester Stølan, Head of Waste Disposal.

The facility is similar to our own CASs but is much larger. It has dozens of bins and skips for recyclable items, large sheds where dry recyclables are deposited, baled and stored, a massive pile of waste timber and even a shop where all types of goods are sold. Compostable waste, including food waste, is dealt with at a separate facility.

Ms. Stølan said that all plastic waste is transported to large plants in Germany and Sweden for sorting and recycling, and this is done by the Norwegian organisation Grønt Punkt (Green Point). This is a not-for-profit company which represents the commercial packaging industry and fulfils their obligation to meet recycling targets under the EU Packaging Directive.

Norway recycles 33% of its plastic waste compared to 27% in Ireland and 22% in the UK. But when energy recovery through incineration is added the total rises to 91%.

To the rear of the Steinkjer CAS is a small landfill site which takes any non-combustible waste that can’t be recycled. Surprisingly, this amounts to only 430 tonnes of waste annually and this is in an area about half the size of Down District.

Compare this to the 20,000 tonnes of waste we bury every year at the Drumnakelly landfill site and it is clear that we have a long way to go to reach the highest European standards. Apart from the costs of providing a highly engineered landfill site, landfill tax alone now costs the Down District ratepayer about £1.3m annually.

Back home, I wondered why we could not recycle more of our plastic waste and thus help reduce the tonnage going to landfill. I was, of course, aware that the only plastic items currently permitted in the blue bin are plastic bottles. Other types of plastics such as food containers and trays, plastic wrapping, plastic bags and bubble wrap, go into the black bin. An analysis shows that plastics account for 16% of our black bin waste and that much of this could be recycled.

This raises the question — why can’t we recycle more of our plastic waste?

Colette O’Rourke, of Down Council, told me that the range of items that can be recycled is determined by Arc21, the umbrella waste management group for 11 district councils in the east of the Province, including Belfast.

Its Policy and Operations Director, Ricky Burnett, explained that recycling policy and practice is complex and is influenced by factors such as the capacity of recycling plants here, population size and distribution, and markets for waste materials, as well as historical attitudes.

The modern approach to waste reduction and treatment emerged later here than in continental Europe and we are still very much engaged in catching up. In other European countries the packaging industry funds collection and recycling through a levy on packaging production, but this is not the case in the UK.

Currently, Bryson Recycling processes all Arc21 councils’ blue bin waste at their Mallusk plant. However, there are moves afoot to increase the range of permitted blue bin items and from next year this will be reflected in Arc21’s dry recyclables contract. This will mean fuller blue bins and less material going to landfill.

At the moment, blue bin lorries finish their rounds only half full and to save transport costs the waste is taken to the MacNabb Brothers facility near Killough, checked and then taken in bulk to Mallusk. Councils in the north-west of the Province have already expanded the range of blue bin items to include more types of plastic, clothing, aerosols, cartons and glass.

The question of how waste is dealt with in Northern Ireland is currently a subject of much debate but a major factor driving changes is the EU Landfill Directive which requires the amount of waste going to landfill to be reduced to just 35% of its 1995 levels by 2020.

Arc21’s strategy for dealing with residual waste in future is to use Mechanical Biological Treatment (MBT) and Energy from Waste (EfW) — technologies which are already widely used in Great Britain and Europe. By processing its own residual waste Magherafelt District Council now manages to recycle or compost 53% of all its household waste.

The General Manager at MacNabb Brothers, Ciaran Clancy, citing the Magherafelt example, advocates a more flexible attitude to waste recycling and disposal and believes that more involvement of local waste management firms could deliver cost savings and environmental benefits.

In the meantime, we can all, as individuals, take up the challenge of minimising our waste outputs and some day we will be up there with the Norwegians.

n Karl Partridge is an Environmental Consultant based in Crossgar, Co Down.