There is No Guarantee That the Products You Recycle Are Actually Recycled, the UK Watchdog Warns (bbc.co.uk)

An anonymous reader shares a report: The National Audit Office (NAO) says over half of the packaging reported as recycled is actually being sent abroad to be processed. As a result, it says, the government has little idea of whether the recyclables are getting turned into new products, buried in landfill or burned. While an illusion of success has been created by the UK's system for recycling packaging, the NAO says, the reality may be quite different. Its report finds that: The government has turned a blind eye to underlying problems with the waste system. Firms may be over-stating the amount they are recycling. The Environment Agency has only carried out 40% of the recycling checks it planned to.

Comments

Recycling theater is ubiquitous.

[HornWumpus]

Because to economically recycle plastic, it has to be source sorted by recycling # (which reflects chemistry).

Which means you need to have a half dozen plastic recycle bins, imputes a value of $0.01/hour to your time.

Also colored glass and paper is almost never actually recycled.

The bastards do this, because the sorting time looks free to them. They should be kicked square in the balls/cunt.

Re:Recycling theater is ubiquitous.

[HornWumpus]

Are you saying that's an argument for recycling theater?

Nobody is ignoring the cost of landfill, it is just the cheapest, by far. Making people sort and wash their trash into 32 streams that all end in the landfill is just the _stupidest_ of all outcomes. Unless you're just trying to train people to do as they are told.

Re: Recycling theater is ubiquitous.

[Mashiki]

It's been cheaper to burn paper/cardboard since the day environmentalists started screeching that paper kills trees and plastic is better. Welcome to 1979 by the way. To recycle paper you have to deink, rebleach, and break whatever it was into base fiber then re-gunkify the entire mess all over again. Even then, most places avoid it because rebonding the fibers makes for weaker paper or requires resins to stop it from degrading quickly. W2E facilities are a better option in many if not all cases. Again, thank environmentalists for their rabid bleating that said facilities are really really really really really bad. Never mind that the heavy ash can be used a clinker(for cement and drywall) or anything. Just don't let them know that we burn nearly all the tires in use for clinker and fuel for cement plant kilns or anything, or they'd go brain dead stupid.

Which reminds me of an example of environmental stupidity from here in Ontario. Pipeline running from Sarina to Montreal, oh there was no problem with the pipeline being used currently. The problem came from them wanting to reverse the direction of flow, and reduce the operating pressure because of it's age. It was replaced with a newer pipeline about a decade ago, so having two redundant pipelines flowing in the same direction was a waste of money. The response? Endless screeching by environmentalists about how it was an environmental catastrophe and would poison all of southern ontario, not exaggerating on that one. It was pushed heavily by environmentalists as true. But razing a stand of old growth maples, oaks, and other broadleafs to put up gigantic fucking windmills? Perfectly okay. It was the hunting associations that blocked that one, because they'd been reintroducing wild turkey, pheasants and hawks to the area.

Re:Recycling theater is ubiquitous.

[Solandri]

Glass recycling is more about preventing broken glass bottles from littering the streets and parks. The deposit on most bottles (paid when you buy the beverage, refunded when you return the bottle at a recycler) encourages people to dispose of the bottles properly, instead of just chuck them out the car window. And even if you do chuck them out the window, some homeless person will probably clean them up for the deposit. Glass is just sand that's been melted, and is one of the more innocuous things you can put into a landfill (doesn't degrade into other nasty chemicals). So it winding up in landfills instead of being recycled isn't really a problem.

Likewise, paper buried in landfills is sequestered carbon. The tree pulled CO2 out of the atmosphere, used energy from sunlight to break off the O2, and locked up the Carbon in the form of cellulose. We chopped the tree down and turned that cellulose into paper. Burying the paper represents putting the carbon back underground, the reverse of what we do when we dig up and burn fossil fuels. In theory the paper could eventually biodegrade (converting the C back into CO2). But core samples drilled into landfills have come up with bits of newspaper over a century old, indicating not much biodegrading goes on. So burying paper in a landfill instead of recycling it isn't a problem either. (You don't really save trees by recycling paper - it's in the logger's best interest to re-plant any tree they chop down, so they'll have another tree to chop down in 20-40 years. So in developed countries, the number of trees remains fairly constant.)

Metals usually cost enough to refine that it's worth recycling them.

It's the plastics that are the problem. When I asked my garbage hauling service how they sort plastics, they claimed they hired inmates at below-minimum wage to do it for them.

People do what you inspect (not expect)

[sjbe]

As a result, it says, the government has little idea of whether the recyclables are getting turned into new products, buried in landfill or burned.

If you don't know then the answer is that they are being handled in whatever manner is least expensive and/or most profitable. Most likely that is either burning or landfill with the chances increasing the lower the energy inputs required to make new. To presume otherwise is to be naive. Steel and aluminum are probably recycled because the energy required to make new is enormous versus recycling. Plastics are probably just buried or burned or dumped in the ocean.

There is a saying that people don't do what you EXPECT, they do what you INSPECT. If you want to be sure it is being handled appropriately then you need to inspect the process to be sure. If you don't inspect then you won't get what you expect.

Nothing new here

[mi]

This is a known problem in the States too. NYC, in particular, sends over half of its "recyclables" to landfill anyway. But, not to worry, they still fine people for failing to sort their trash — whether it helps environment or not, whatever increases the government's power over the subjects is a good thing, is not it?

Re:Nothing new here

[mi]

Emphasising good behaviour in the most difficult to manage

When fines are issued, it is no longer mere "emphasizing", but forcing.

Nor are we talking of "good behavior", but rather of obedience. Manually separating trash, which will be mixed back together, is not "good behavior" — it is a patently stupid one. Only an authoritarian — like yourself — would insist on forcing a known stupidity for the sake of obedience...

What do you suggest

I suggest, the government stops pretending to be a parent, who knows better, and stops punishing people for failing to separate, what will be mixed back together anyway.

then they fix their problem and you get to spend your tax dollars

Oh, wow, a genuine concern for tax dollars. Very simple: when (if!) you fix the problem, then you can start issuing fines again.

Re:thats why i don't recycle

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why i don't recycle because there safer in the landfill. At least its contained and cheaper for myself.

That doesn't make any sense. So, some fraction of the plastic sent to recycling doesn't actually get recycled... but it doesn't make sense to say it's "safer" to send it directly to landfill, instead of recycling some of it and then sending what's left to landfill.

Actually, in many cases it is safer, cheaper and better to just throw things in a landfill. In theory, recycling is a really great idea. But in actual practice, it often causes more pollution and environmental damage, not less.

For example, the process that is used to recycle paper involves various chemicals and as a by-product, generates many tens of thousands of tons of toxic sludge that has to be disposed of -- by dumping it into a landfill. It would be far less harmful to just throw the paper away and dump it into a landfill.

It's the same for recycling many other things as well. In many cases, the recycling process generates air, water or ground pollution that wouldn't be generated if you just throw stuff away and don't try to "recycle" it.

Recycling is also extremely expensive and just simply not economically viable. That's why the U.S. and EU export all their trash to various third world countries. The only way that recycling can even come close to be economically viable is to do it in a situation where people are paid pennies a day and where there are little or no environmental regulations.

Re:thats why i don't recycle

[jellomizer]

In the States in some areas we have Single Stream Recycling.
Where you put in all your recyclable (Paper, Some plastics normally the thick plastic, and Metal) materials into one bin. Then it goes and gets sorted out.

Only about 1/3 of the material actually gets recycled. However the amount of material sent over to be recycled has increased 5 fold. So overall we are better with a less efficient process, because the convenience makes it easier to increase your output.

For some reason there is a reaction if something isn't working as well as it should, we should just stop it all together. While the net benefit outweighs the cost.

I have also heard a similar type of argument against LED traffic lights. Because in a rare weather condition snow can cover the lights, and be hard to see, while incandescent bulbs create enough heat to melt the snow.
Because of this perhaps once a year occurance, people are using this to prevent LED lights, which use less energy, are cheaper to maintain, offer better viability, as well often will not die at once.