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Should you clean your yogurt pots – and six other key questions about plastic recycling

should i clean yogurt pots how recycle properly
should i clean yogurt pots how recycle properly

Turkey may currently be on the Red List for any UK passengers hoping to travel, but the Government seems rather more relaxed about the route our rubbish takes.

A new report released by Greenpeace has found that the country has become the latest destination for Britain’s mountain of plastic waste. Investigators examined 10 sites around the Turkish city of Adana in March and discovered plastic waste from leading British supermarkets dumped, burned, and spilling into rivers and the sea.

Much of the plastic packaging, no doubt, would have been carefully cleaned and sorted by UK homeowners and placed into their recycling bins in the expectation that it would be properly processed.

So the sight of it smouldering on a Turkish mountainside begs the obvious question: what actually happens to your plastic waste?

1. How much still gets shipped abroad?

The UK exported 688,000 tons of discarded plastic packaging in 2020, a daily average of 1.8m kilos. Just 486,000 tons were recycled in the UK.

The previous main destination for the bulk of our waste was China but since it banned the import of almost all plastic in 2017, Turkey has emerged as the main receiver of British plastic waste. UK exports to the country increased from 12,000 tons in 2016 to 209,642 tons in 2020, about 30 per cent of the UK’s plastic waste exports.

According to UK Government figures, Malaysia was the second destination for British plastic waste, receiving 65,000 tons in 2020, followed by Poland, which received 38,000 tons.

2. How much of our rubbish actually gets recycled?

Last year’s English recycling rate of 45.5 per cent of our total waste was the highest on record. In Wales – which has traditionally been far better at recycling – it was 65.1 per cent and in Scotland it was 44.9 per cent.

A survey based on English local authority data published in December found that from between April 2019 and March 2020 the collection rate was 59 per cent for bottles; 33 per cent for pots, tubs and trays, seven per cent for film and 39 per cent for all household plastic packaging.

3. Why do rates vary so much across the country?

For years England has been plagued by a non-standardised system which has led to wildly varying recycling rates across the country and complex restrictions on what can be recycled. According to recent figures, Three Rivers district council in Hertfordshire, for example, was the local authority with the highest recycling rate at 64.1 per cent, while Barrow-in-Furness borough council in Cumbria had the lowest at 18.8 per cent.

A recent study published in 2018 revealed there was 39 different sets of rules for plastic recycling set by councils across the country. The Government has recently announced plans to standardise recycling across England by 2023, which it hopes will boost recycling rates.

4. How much single-use plastic waste do we get through – and how to spot it?

According to a newly-published study by researchers at the London School of Economics, the UK comes in fourth overall for the countries which generate the most single-use plastics per head of population. In Britain more than 40kg of single-use plastic waste is generated per person, per year – a figure that has been exacerbated by the ramping up of PPE production as a result of the Covid pandemic.

To identify non-recyclable plastic waste, look at the resin codes imprinted on the item (these are the numbers inside the triangle of arrows). Numbers 3, 6 and 7 are the most difficult to recycle while 1, 2 and 5 are the easiest.

A table of plastic resin identification codes -  Alamy Stock Vector
A table of plastic resin identification codes - Alamy Stock Vector

Bags that are crinkly and airtight, such as salad bags or crisp packets, are made of composite plastics that are almost impossible to recycle. And while polystyrene (used for takeaway boxes, cups and food packaging) and PVC (used for food packaging and drainpipes and guttering) are technically recyclable, many local authorities will not do so.

Plastic film is another item that many local authorities do not accept but you can take it to most large supermarkets sites to recycle.

5. Do you really need to wash out your yogurt pots and tins of baked beans?

While items do not need to be spotless, if they contain food items they risk contaminating porous materials such as paper and card and rendering a whole load unrecyclable. Last week in an interview with the BBC Tim Duret, director of sustainable technology at the waste firm Veolia, which services 10m people in Britain, said it was important to rinse containers and in particular clean off what he calls large items of “3D” food waste. He stressed it is also important because as well as machines sorting the rubbish, there will be people working on the production line.

6. Does one bit of non-recyclable material in a piece of packaging mean it's chucked in landfill?

Sorting lines mean that non-recyclable material can be parsed from otherwise recyclable material, so an item that contains both isn't necessarily sent straight to landfill. According to Duret, Veolia typically allows for contamination rates of 10 per cent.

However, if the amount of non-recyclable waste in rubbish collected by a local authority goes above 15-20 per cent then it becomes economically unviable for local authorities to deal with and risks being thrown away. So, if you and your neighbours all take a relaxed attitude to separating non-recyclable from recyclable, there's a chance none of it will get reused.

According to figures published in March by the Local Government Association (LGA) 525,000 tons of household recycling was rejected at the point of sorting in 2019/2020. According to the LGA this equates to more than £48m in additional costs, a bill it is calling on manufacturers of plastic packaging to foot as they continue to create products that cannot be recycled.

7. What is being done to improve things?

The Government has set an “ambition” of zero avoidable waste by 2050 and a “target” of eliminating avoidable plastic waste by 2042. Proposals include a plastic packaging tax on manufacturers and a long-touted deposit return scheme. However campaigners say far more urgency is required to tackle the scale of the problem.