Targets 'hamper recycling effort'
October 13, 2004
Government policy undermines efforts to improve the UK's recycling record, a sustainable development charity says.
A report by Forum for the Future says national targets based on weight encouraged the recycling of heavy materials such as glass and newspapers.
But lighter materials such as aluminium, which have a bigger UK market, were neglected.
The report says targets should be set according to which materials provide the most benefits for recycling.
The study, carried out for liquid food packaging firm Tetra Pak, looked into why quantities of recycled packaging, such as plastic bottles, cartons and cans, were low in the UK.
Researchers found weight-based targets driven by the EU's packaging directive and implemented by the UK Government were a key factor.
The report warns of a green glass bottle mountain in the UK, where there is an insufficient market for recycled glass.
In 2003, one in three recovered green glass bottles (100,000 tonnes) was being exported, it adds.
Meanwhile, the UK aluminium recycling industry needed to import the material from elsewhere in Europe in order to reach its capacity.
Jonathon Parrott, programme director of Forum for the Future and chairman of the UK Sustainable Development Commission, said the current policy framework was still sending the wrong signals to the market.
He said: "We welcome the new Government campaign to make recycling more appealing to the public."
Landfill ban
"But there is a strong risk of this good work being undermined if policy isn't rooted in a real understanding of sustainability and driven by the need to get maximum value from packaging materials with the lowest impact on the environment.
"Exporting recovered bottles as far as China is not a sustainable solution."
Mike Ansell, managing director of Tetra Pak UK, said it was "madness" for targets to drive recycling of material for which there is no market in the UK and not encourage recycling for materials for which there was a good market.
He said: "Our cartons are made from a renewable resource - paper from well managed forests - and are extremely efficient as a form of packaging. We want them to be as easy to recycle in the UK as they are in many parts of Europe.
"But the rules are making this incredibly difficult to achieve."
The report, entitled Wasted Opportunities, also called for the UK to follow the example of other EU countries and introduce landfill bans for anything which could be recycled.
It also suggested expanding doorstep recycling schemes and allowing local authorities to charge residents according to how much waste they produced after sorting for recyclables.
It comes after the Government launched a £10m campaign in September to encourage people to recycle household waste.
This story was first carried on the BBC News site.
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