COMMENTS ABOUT RECYCLING

I have received two very different comments about recycling:

• the first was supportive and asked a few questions;


• the second, was negative and said it is a waste of time.

As I said in my last-but-one post (RECYCLE) there are actions far more important than recycling. We should:

• stop buying things that we won't make good use of;


• we should give items to Freecycle, and search Freecycle for things we want as well;


• we should re-use glass jars and plastic containers and


• we should repair items to extend their useful life when we can.

Recycling is the last but one resort. However, if the only way you can recycle your waste paper, bottles and cans is to drive out of your way to a recycling depot, then it is better to put them in your dustbin.

For those of us with a doorstep collection or a convenient recycling depot, who have surplus items that can't be reused or repaired, recycling is better than sending them to landfill or even to an "energy-from-waste" plant, such as Tyseley in Birmingham.

Collecting cans from the street may be a bit eccentric, but I don't think it is a waste of time as it only takes a few seconds - and the energy saved from recycling one drinks can, rather than using new aluminium, will provide three hours electricity for a TV. That sounds like a pretty good return on an investment to me.

I have also heard myths about the contents of our recycling boxes being sent to China and ending up in landfill etc etc. The truth, in Birmingham at any rate, is rather different. Jeremy Shields, who is in charge of Waste Management for the City Council, provided the information in my RECYCLE post:

"Paper and card from Birmingham's blue box collection is processed for re-use within Birmingham (in Nechells), and the tins, cans and bottles from Birmingham's green box collection is currently taken to a "Materials Recovery Facility" in Essex, but not for much longer as a new MRF will soon be opened in Wolverhampton."

The use of the "recovered" material is not necessarily reuse in the same form. For instance, glass collected from recycling boxes may be used as hardcore for road improvements. Glass taken to colour separated bottle banks has more value. Clear glass, and at times coloured glass, is taken to kilns to be remade into glass. However the Green Box collections have resulted in an additional 10,000 tons of glass being recycled from the city.

In Birmingham, when Tyseley is operating normally, a very small fraction of waste, mainly material unsuitable for energy recovery, goes to landfill. This includes all the glass that was not put in green boxes or bottle banks.