March 4, 2008

Recycling to the tip

There is so much coverage about the recycling that our local authorities are doing and what a good cause it is, that when you come across a story that blows the lid off the whole thing then it just has to be written about so that the whole picture can be balanced out and everyone can see both sides of the story.

Councils are making it harder for people to dispose of their rubbish by either cutting back on the weekly pick ups or making people use all different sorts of methods to separate the different types of rubbish, so it can be disposed of sensibly. When all of this is done we rightly assume that this rubbish is going to be recycling, but we would be wrong.

For it seems that there are councils out there who are disposing of all the rubbish collected into landfill sites including all of the recyclables. In fact it has been estimated that 240,000 tons of plastic, glass and paper is being burned or buried. On a national scale it is estimated that an eighth of all recyclable rubbish is being burned or buried.

Source [Telegraph]