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 150 000 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
http://www.sustainability-
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
http://www.cwag.org.uk/
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