My recyling box instructions say ‘no plastic’ and when I see recycling bins there’s never a ‘Plastic’ bin.
I’d have thought recycling plastic was quite important, how does the UK go about recycling its plastic?
My local council has implemented a two-bin process; I have a black wheelie bin, into which all my non-recycle waste is put (cooked kitchen waste, some (actually most)plastics and packaging, vacuum cleaner dust etc) and a green wheelie bin into which recyclable materials are put (paper, card, metal cans, and plastic bottles only).
Plastics such as carrier bags, yoghurt pots, blister cards and fast food containers are not to be put in the green bin; I assume that they are only accepting plastic bottles because of the relative ease of sorting (and possibly the marketability of the material).
Uncooked vegetable waste is composted in a composting bin (also provided by the council), glass bottles and jars can go into the black bin, but they prefer me to take them to the local bottle bank, likewise, aluminium foil can go into the black one, but local recycling facilities exist, so I batch it up in the garage and make a trip with bottles, foil and large items every few months.
I meant to add; my bins are emptied on alternating weeks, which isn’t usually a problem, but in high summer it can get a bit stinky and we have had occasional problems with maggots in the black bin, and at Christmas, a combination of reduced collections and increased waste can result in us having to reserve the black bin for food waste only and store the non-perishable overflow in bags in the garage.
In areas where there is no plastic option, do they fish out the plastics at the dump (on a conveyor, for example) or does it all just go into a big hole in the ground*
*later resold as prime real estate with big ‘No Smoking’ signs.
As far as I’m aware, very little sorting of waste(that isn’t collected as recylable) happens after collection - the trucks drive to the landfill, tip their load and it is squashed flat by huge vehicles with spiked wheels and interspersed with layers of soil.
So yes, a lot of plastics are currently going into our landfills, for a number of reasons:
They are quite a diverse set of materials and would have to be fully sorted.
They aren’t all fully recyclable.
As a recycled product, they aren’t all marketable or useful.
They are often difficult to separate from other materials such as card or different types of plastic.
In the area I live in it’s mainly flats and tenements so, unless you chuck everything (in bags, hopefully) into a big kerbside communal bin (emptied twice a week), you have to take anything for re-cycling to various collection points.
Fortunately, I walk past bins for paper, glass, cans, old clothes and plastic most mornings. If I wanted to re-cycle cardboard, I’d have to take it to the 1(?) Edinburgh collection point which accepts it.
I can re-cycle plastic bottles (unless they’ve held stuff like bleach, etc.), including milk containers, but not other items like the bottle tops, yogurt tubs, carry-out containers and soon. It’s stupid because sometimes I can re-cycle a plastic bottle but I’m not supposed to re-cycle a plastic tub made of the same type of plastic!