Waste and recycling Too much?

Where does all the waste come from? The 400 million tonnes of waste produced in the UK each year comes from a variety of sources.

Waste is … Something which is no longer useful to people. In the UK we throw away 25 million tonnes of household waste every year That’s nearly 350 kilos of waste for every person! How many times of your body weight is that?

What do you throw away? Plastic wrappers, …..?

The effects? Throwing away this much waste uses up precious resources. Much of our waste is made from finite resources – materials that once used cannot be replaced – which are they? Also more energy can go to make new materials than reuse old ones – so throwing them away wastes energy – which might they be?

More effects 83% of household waste end up in landfill sites They look bad, take up space and attract vermin. Toxic substances accumulate, e.g. chemicals from batteries 9% of waste is incinerated. But this pollutes the air and there are worries about plastics releasing toxins into the air. However, as we saw last week, better methods of releasing energy from waste will become more important.

But instead of burying or burning … What about recycling? Currently we recycle about 8% of our waste It could be as much as 70% Link the word recycling with each of these words –Resources –Energy –Pollution –Sustainable development

Recycling glass Reduces waste Saves energy It takes 20% less energy to produce bottles from recycled glass There are bottle banks nationwide in the UK Do you use them? Or do the refuse men take your bottles away separately Of 6 billion bottles used in the UK, 29% are recycled How many bottles per person are recycled?

Recycling aluminium It costs a lot to produce because it uses LOTS of energy Recycled aluminium takes 95% less energy and causes 99% less pollution that production it from bauxite rock. Of 5 billion aluminium cans produced, 1.6 billion are recycled So 3.2 billion, worth £24 billion as scrap end up in land fill!

Now to a site ed.org/pages/example2-1.htm

Look at what the rest of the EU are doing?

Most of the recycled stuff ends up in landfill anyway (Source: West Oxford District Council press release August 2006) GLASS - 70% of glass is sold to the UK glass industry and recycled for bottle making and fibreglass manufacture. A small amount is used in road aggregate (WODC glass goes to a recycler in West Yorkshire). The other 30% goes to the European glass market, mainly to Italy, France, Spain and Portugal, making bottles of a darker green because of having been made from a variety of colours. CANS - Our food and drink cans go to South Wales. The steel is recovered and sold globally. The aluminium is sold within the UK and made into new drinks cans. The process of recycling used drinks cans to make new ones can take as little as 6 weeks from bin to supermarket.

Most of the recycled stuff ends up in landfill anyway CARDBOARD - Our cardboard goes to a processor in Doncaster where it is recovered, bulked and sold to paper and cardboard mills. Each time cardboard is pulped, the fibres get shorter, but even so, cardboard can be recycled 4 or 5 times. Uses include boxes and packaging, stationery, and animal bedding. PAPER - WODC paper goes to Kent where it is made into newsprint. Higher grade office paper from the WODC offices is sold on to be made into tissue paper products. PLASTICS - Plastics go to a recycler in Lancashire where mixed plastics make a wide range of products such as drain pipes, insulation materials, flower pots, watering cans, and fleece material. Myth - Plastic is exported to China and dumped in landfill!

Most of the recycled stuff ends up in landfill anyway TEXTILES - Textiles from recycling centres are collected by Cope and taken to their charity shops for resale. Those not suitable for that are sold to rag merchants. Materials collected at the kerbside are sent as second-hand clothes to the third world. Other materials are baled and produce wiping cloths or sold to make insulating material and other products. Fabric Facts (Source: CAG Oxfordshire Newsletter October 2006) Nearly 70% of items put into clothing banks are reused as clothes. Any unwearable items are sold to merchants to be recycled as factory wiping cloths. NoLoGo are a team of volunteer designers set up by Oxfam who restyle donated garments and fabrics, selling them on at some Oxfam shops.

Most of the recycled stuff ends up in landfill anyway At least 50% of the textiles we throw away are recyclable. If everyone in the UK bought one reclaimed woolen garment each year it would save an average of 371 million gallons of water and 480 tonnes of chemical dyestuffs. It is estimated that more that 1 million tonnes of textiles are thrown away every year, with most of this coming from household sources. Unwearable trousers, skirts, etc are sold to the 'flocking' industry which shreds them for fillers in car insulation, roofing felts, loudspeaker cones, panel linings, furniture padding etc. Over 70% of the world's population use secondhand clothes.

This came from Charlbury Area Waste Action Group

Recycling in Third World Cities Urban waste is a serious health risk to the slum dwellers and squatter settlers who make up about 40% of the developing world's urban population of 1.1 billion, according to Carl Bartone, a senior project officer for the Integrated Resource Recovery Project at the World Bank. Many of these squatters live near garbage dumps, and some live literally on top of them. The cities face difficulties in collecting and disposing of wastes, although they spend as much as 50% of their operating budgets on solid-waste management.

Zabaleens in Cairo Now, innovative waste-management solutions are emerging that help provide jobs, improve living conditions, and protect the environment. In Cairo, some 30,000 Zabaleens (Coptic Christians from southern Egypt) make up a network of well- organized and highly efficient garbage collectors. A pair of Zabaleens working with a horse-drawn carriage can collect garbage from 350 households in a day. After sorting the garbage, the collectors will feed the edible garbage (about two-thirds of the total) to pigs and goats to fatten them for market; sell pig droppings and human excrement to farmers for fertilizer; and sell scrap metal, glass, paper, and plastics to middlemen, who then sell the materials to craftsmen.

"Zabaleens make as much as three times the average income in Cairo," says Bartone.

"In many developing countries, up to 2% of the population is supported directly or indirectly by refuse from the upper 20% of the population.” Private garbage collectors and sorters also benefit from recycling. Mexico's Juarez City Co-operative of Materials Recoverers, established in 1975, recovers and sells approximately 5% of the waste stream. In 1984, the cooperative had sales of $31 million, compared with only $6.3 million in operating costs.

In addition, sensible waste management creates energy in the form of biogas and provides raw material for such inexpensive products as water pipes, beverage containers, buckets, lamps, stoves, and sandals. The Integrated Resource Recovery Project, established by the United Nations Development Programme and the World Bank in 1981, aims to demonstrate appropriate solutions that would enable cities to improve their waste-management capacity and make better use of limited financial resources by recovering the value inherent in wastes. Resource-recovery methods that the IRRP has studied include using waste water as refill material to reclaim low-lying swampland and using treated water for irrigation and fish cultivation.

Homework In google put (your council area) news waste recycling Pick a story from the news Write a brief summary of what the story is about and comment on it – I chose this because …. I tried Powys – for me and I also tried GLC for London Those of you not in the UK, either use the local area where you live – which will mean the local language – or if you prefer, choose a place in the UK that you know quite well – your choice