Why haven’t we sorted sorting plastics for recycling yet?

There seems to be an incredibly simple way that plastics can be identified, yet it’s not universally used in the UK for recycling sorting or made mandatory that all plastics are marked with it.

Each type of plastic has an associated number. E.g. LDPE is 4

I saw this system in use a decade ago in New Zealand for recycling sorting. Bins were marked with the number/s of the plastics to put in each bin. Yet here we still seem to use what the item is e.g. a plastic milk bottle, to identify the plastic. The number marking system seems better to me as it removes any ambiguity. E.g. the council can say put plastics 2, 5 and 7 in the recycling bin. If you can’t find the stamp then use the guide above as a fall back….yet we don’t?

The problem is there absolutely no joined up thinking  – its left to individual councils to decide what to collect and what route to recycling to takes. You could have a clearer more understandable system if everyone worked on the same agreed system. Rather than the unfathomable ‘recyclable where facilities exist’ you have printed on some packets

The other problem is the identification is so faint and hard to find – those symbols are already on most packaging but they’re far from obvious. I think we’ve established now that recycling is the only thing we’re thinking about when we look at an empty packet – why not make that symbol 50mm wide rather than 5mm?

No financial incentive to big companies basically.

Reduce, reuse, recycle. Its the first two we need to concentrate on

Interesting that the chart above says that Polystyrene is ‘not recyclable’ especially as I bought a job lot of polystyrene packaging from a recycling facility for an arts project once.

Once we’d finished with it I called them up to arrange returning it as I didn’t want it to end up in landfill – “just the throw it in any bin – it all finds its way back to us”

Because it wouldnt work.

One plastic bottle with the hdpe top still on would ruin your batch of pet etc. And you put another barrier in the way of keeping recycling simple, theres one very good reason why councils only give people 1 box and just ask for everything in it, its easy for people to do. Who has room in their house for 6x plastic bins, 3x glass, ferrous, non ferrous, paper, kitchen waste, and non recyclables. We dont get anywhere near 100% recovery with just a choice of 3 in most areas!

Whereas you can sort it pretty quickly and easily via an automated system by looking at infrared trasnmittance.

Also, anything that involves everyone driving to a central location to do the recycling is a futile exercise, you burn more hydrocarbons driving to a supermarket than all the plastic packaging. If it wasnt for the other pollutants released youd be better off burning it at home.

TINAS, it would all still go in one box like it does now, but instead of basing it primarily on the type of object you use the number system instead. Our local kerbside recycling seems to accept PETE (1) and HDPE (2) in the same box.

With their carrier bag recycling, seems supermarkets would accept LDPE (4) and PP (5). But I’m not 100% on that, which is what led me to thinking about it and this post. I was sorting the bags we have to take along on the next supermarket visit.

I’ll go for lack of political will, successive governments seem to think forcing business into some basic standards is too disruptive. Unlike the other thing where it all has to be done at speed. Although if we can Brexit we can do anything as nothing else would require so much change. Except we probably won’t as it’ll be seen as too disruptive because the economy is too fragile.

What are people doing on reduce? I’ve gone for the marginal gains – trying to make one change a month. Swapped to soap and shampoo bars, bamboo mug, cloth bags, thinking of going shaving soap / brush. Anyone done that?

We are doing a mega waste review in my business at the moment. it’s been quite interesting!

Sorting and processing plastics is a minefield that’s for sure.

But the other big problem is further downstream. There is insufficient demand for the recycled material.

Example: HDPE is the most widely material used for milk bottles, and it is the easiest material to sort, process and recycle, and still retains good properties afterwards. Out of all your your waste this definitely ought to be recycled. However virgin HDPE is cheaper, so almost nobody uses the recycled stuff! So instead it gets sold and shipped far away.

I was told that the next best thing to reusables, is to buy things made from recycled material. That creates demand so that more of what we put into our recycling bins is actually recycled. Recycling on its own just adds to the mountain of waste that could be recycled but nobody wants to.

Surely you just make it the manufacturers responsibility. Each type gets a different colour pigment. All PTFE is blue all pet is red etc. Yes the advertising bids would hate it but really who gives a **** what they think.

Just bumping this, it’s becoming a bit of a resource so do post up about any changes that you’re considering or have made, recommendations are always welcome too.

SaveThePlanetTrackWorld

The problem is there absolutely no joined up thinking

Very much this. I have a month’s worth of recycling in my wheelie bin (one person household) and it’s pretty much full up. Considering I’m a minimalist/zero waste shopping kinda gal these days, why is there so much in it? Perhaps a waste audit is in order?

As someone in SEPA pointed out to me, people with chaotic lifestyles can barely feed and clothe their kids properly, do you realistically expect them to sort their recycling?

Packaging tax is the answer, the more complex to sort and recycle the more expensive the tax. Mixed plastic and paper big tax, mixed plastic that cannot be sorted, punitive tax. Etc

I’m a supervisor in recycling plant, one of our key problems is paper labels on plastic packaging. You can get away with upto 5% (2% for blowing film) but scrap above that would be sent abroad. Changing the law so all labels have to be plastic would allow the country to recycle more, to a better standard and export a lot less. After all, it’s the exported stuff that ends up in the sea.

The problem with the post consumer stuff is people don’t want to clean their recycling. We used to do milk bottle scrap and it would stink out half the town.

Reduce, reuse, recycle. Its the first two we need to concentrate on

Yep i do think there’s going thru the ‘feel good’ motions of recycling And the real deal which is the first,two.

The reason we need to recycle is the branding on the packaging , we should be refilling the plastic bottles not sending em halfway round the world for er recycling.

Just to add that my local zero waste shop is using a closed loop system for shampoo, conditioner, body wash etc. Distributor takes back empty 20 litre containers and they’re refilled/reused until they reach the end of their life.

What are people doing on reduce? I’ve gone for the marginal gains – trying to make one change a month. Swapped to soap and shampoo bars, bamboo mug, cloth bags, thinking of going shaving soap / brush. Anyone done that?

Yes, and we’ve just started using local zero waste shop(s), but obviously at a significant level it needs state action. I read / listened to a podcast recently that pointed out we can make dramatic and sudden changes if we’re forced to, but most governments are committed to a sort of glacial, sloth-like progress towards more sustainable solutions. Vehicle emissions? Swap to electric vehicles by 2050. Not soon enough, erm, okay, 2035. We won’t truly change until impending doom slams the door on our fingers. In the mean time, vested interests, lobbying and a system where political parties are in hoc to big business capitalism.

We’re locked into a loop where there will never be the will to change things until it’s obviously too late.

On a local level, councils are truly terrible – or at least ours is – when it comes to education on recycling. We put our neighbour’s bins out for them and the other week I had to pull a load of polystyrene out of their green waste bin. In what world is polystyrene considered organic waste? We’re doomed 🙁

I feel it’s a case of we each do what we can. I wash out all my recycling, yet my ex-neighbours would have no regard for which of the two bins to use, let alone rinse it beforehand. People are lazy and generally ignorant and I’m not sure education would help. Nor would penalties or fines and I’m not sure what the answer is. I live along a rural lane that is constantly being littered with everything from fast food bags, general rubbish, drinks cans, wet wipes, fridges, tyres. It’s a joke quite frankly.

I remember being in Thailand in 1989 and seeing the piles and piles of general rubbish, everywhere, at a time where the UK had been wising up to recycling and my thoughts were then, as they are now. Humans don’t deserve this planet, the sooner we’re done and dusted the better the planet will be.

We are trying to do our best to recycle plastic but this is not helped by manufacturers. For example, fruit juice bottles, the bottle is PET(recyclable), shrunk-on plastic film(not recyclable, needs to be cut off), lid(a different plastic which will contaminate the PET). I can bet that a minority of people will bother to separate these.

Manufacturers won’t change unless forced to by legislation, they are driven by least cost.  I now firmly believe that the only way we are going to see a change is for governments to act and ban plastic packaging. It will very probably mean increased cost which either manufacturers will have to absorb or consumers accept.

With their carrier bag recycling, seems supermarkets would accept LDPE (4) and PP (5)

No it’s LDPE(4) & HDPE(2) only. Carrier bags, bubble wrap, ziploc bags, those flimsy greengrocer bags and the inner bags from cereal boxes are safe to put in, other bags can be made of other plastics eg PP or a mix even if they feel the same so check for the label (if there is one…). Also it’s only film, hard bits of LDPE/HDPE can’t go in.

But it used to be done better. 40 years ago we had a milkman deliver local milk from the dairy round the corner. The bottles were collected and cleaned in the dairy. But it needs paid for so to save 20p a pint we get it shipped on artics in plastic bottles with a mix of unrenewable (because we can’t be bothered) plastics.

Because the EU and our government got it wrong 30 years ago when huge taxes were put on landfill. All this did was create waste mountains and overseas exports. They should have put huge tariffs on raw materials. This would have driven a sustainable and large scale recycling industry and generated an output for the recycled material. Were still playing at it, look at the supermarkets, extra plastic wrapping for twin packs when they could just discount purchases of 2 or more at the till, the technology is already there, ready meal containers with sleeves designed to conceal the fact the container is a third bigger than it needs to be, Asda click and collect bagging all the food to put it in the lockers, using the heavy duty plastic bags because they don’t have the thin ones anymore and didn’t design the lockers to take the green plastic trays with a method for stopping people nicking them. The seasonal aisle, full of single use plastic rubbish. We get all excited about MacDonalds straws and plastic bags and then have Halloween decorations. As a society we’re a million miles from being sustainable, if the EU couldn’t get it’s act together we’ve no hope as an individual country with people like Boris in charge.

With their carrier bag recycling, seems supermarkets would accept LDPE (4) and PP (5)

No it’s LDPE(4) & HDPE(2) only. Carrier bags, bubble wrap, ziploc bags, those flimsy greengrocer bags and the inner bags from cereal boxes are safe to put in, other bags can be made of other plastics eg PP or a mix even if they feel the same so check for the label (if there is one…). Also it’s only film, hard bits of LDPE/HDPE can’t go in.

What you’re saying contradicts the graphic I posted (and highlights the main point of my post). In the graphic, carrier bags are listed under PP (5) and it even says these are recycled at supermarkets.

Edit: Looks like the original graphic I posted might be wrong

Here’s another from Which?

That does clear up what I can take to the supermarket though!

Been following these guys for a while.

Not quite sure what the video above is showing, firms have been doing this commercially for years, there was firm 25 years ago turning yoghurt pots into street furniture. The trouble is the output isnt good enough for a lot of products. I used to work for a firm that extruded LDPE pipe insulation, we could regrind the scrap but only use up to 15% anything more would degrade the product. Window frame extruders do the same. Higher rates are probably doable but it will take investment which will happen if the raw material cost goes up.

It does need political will, I did think the other day that “environmental policy and technology” is a political opportunity for the Brexiteers (no hear me out).

If they want to demonstrate the benefits of our new age of self determination, then start legislating practically to support reductions in packaging waste, increase reuse and make recycling more practical.

Apply tariffs to worst offender plastics now to help drive them out of the supply chain, give tax benefits to companies that can demonstrate their packaging is actually reused or makes use of recycled material.

And then narrow down the list different of materials coming into the waste/recycling streams, (as was done the other day with IC engined cars) set a date after which certain materials will be outright banned from use in consumer goods and food packaging within the UK.

Maybe limit the consumer packaging industry to mainly polyethylene? (HDPE/LDPE/PET) and possibly allow limited use of PP. Strengthen the rules on marking of plastics for recycling (obvious prominent labelling of the materials and ideally actual recycling instructions). Then push out the message to consumers about their role in sorting.

Give businesses some notice to get things in place and let recyclers know that the waste streams will be reducing to just these 3 or 4 and let them crack on, we’re now governed by a bunch of free market capitalists who thing you solve problems by making business adapt and provide you with a solution. Let’s see them prove it…

It’s quite depressing that this is not addressed.

Absolute failure of government. Perhaps if we had the Greens in power, but of course, the voting system means that won’t happen.

I used to feel strongly about doing the right thing, now I increasingly feel like I’m pointlessly pissing in the wind.

Is there any money in recycled plastic though, AIUI its cheaper to use new pellets from oil? If There’s no real market for recycled stuff (which will probably be lower quality), then recycling doesn’t have a business case, which is why so much is exported to SE Asia and either burnt or dumped in the sea.

The biggest barrier is because people have been led to believe re-cycling given a very narrow definition is actually a good thing.

So it’s now acceptable to put drinks in plastic because … some recycling company can make money and don’t need to follow the same rules as any other company. If I recycle a drinks bottle its automatically better for the environment by the mis-led rules than just reusing a glass bottle 100x then re-cycling the bottle…??

Instead of making sustainable products that can be repaired consumers now buy “recyclable products” designed to fail so we can ship more new products across the world and send the broken ones to a landfill in a 3rd world country whilst getting a certificate they were recycled.

I agree stevextc. Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. is a set of steps, it’s not just pick the one that suits.

Here’s how sensible legislation works:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jul/12/can-norway-help-us-solve-the-plastic-crisis-one-bottle-at-a-time

Stevextc makes a fair point, we still have rather clunky ideas on the environmental impact of packaging materials and assume that recycling us always the “best” way, when of course something that maybe has a slightly higher upfront emissions penalty but more scope for reuse to offset that and maybe even remove the landfill problem could be a better solution…

Reduce, reuse, recycle. Its the first two we need to concentrate on

OK bear with me on this. I’ve not included numbers so you could dig into it and find that it’s not true, but It’s just a thought experiment to illustrate a point.

Take fruit and veg, and the general moral grandstanding around it’s packaging.

Adam the lazy consumer buys a cucumber or two in shrink wrap, and some salad leaves in bags, etc. It lasts a week of making salad for lunch. Then throws the plastic wrap in the bin on Friday and it gets taken away and incinerated.

Bob the conscious environmentalist goes to the greengrocer 3x a week and buys his salad fresh, because a cucumber dries out and goes a bit rubbery in 48h he has to make three trips a week.

Who’s worse, Adam for generating ~100g of plastic waste, or Bob who has to make three trips to the shops every week?

p.s. Bob also thinks he’s doing good by composting all the remaining rubbery cucumbers. But this actually means even more emissions as more cucumbers had to be grown for him and transported to the greengrocer etc.

My point is, you have to think slightly more holistically about it than just “plastics are bad, don’t do plastics”. Which is ironic given the vociferous arguments some people will come up with is you substitute plastics for drugs in that stantement……

Depends what drugs are being used to wrap my salad and/or cucumbers, unlikely I’d be throwing the wrapping away 😉

Yep tinas that’s a fair point, there’s a lot more to it than avoiding the packaging, same with reusable glass, only works if there’s proper infrastructure so the old milk bottle system worked well collecting them was effectively free and they went back to a dedicated supplier, they bottles probably got used more than enough times to justify the original energy outlay, it doesn’t work for other glass though unless different manufacturers get together and agree on standard bottles and have some way of collecting them intact to return. Probably too complex.

Footflaps, no there isn’t any money in recycled plastics, that’s why raw materials need to have artificial prohibitive tax on them, they eventually get too expensive as the oil runs out but that’s way too late.

Give how our society is focusing on individuals to make a difference won’t, governments need to tax raw materials, force manufacturers to use less packaging and invest in wholesale recovery from the domestic waste stream. All the technology is there but while virgin materials are cheaper than recycled materials and marketing considerations outweight the costs of packaging nothings going to change.

nothings going to change.

Things like the 5p charge on bags are that change though. The question is, could you roll that out to everything? Could you make the weekly shop £5 cheaper and encourage people to bring their own packageing? Or would it backfire.

– takes a lot of water to wash an individual pot.
– inevitably more cases of food poisoning
– economic impact of people switching off “branded” goods when confronted with a tap that says domestos £2 or own brand 35p and no packaging to appeal to them.
– increaced consumption as a result of the above, people just buy 6l of bleach and have cleaner toilets (or buy more of something else, another steak, more greenhouse gases etc).

I feel that the issue of plastics is really one of waste management. The embedded co2 in a plastic bag really is tiny. If its not economical to recycle then it should just be incinerated, no point forcing the issue otherwise you end up where we are now where its shipped arround the world to be recycled into……..

My point is, you have to think slightly more holistically about it than just “plastics are bad, don’t do plastics”.

To use your example tupperware is plastic… Type whatever plastic drainpipes are non recyclable but reusable… plastic crush washers prevent REE enriched mineral oil dribbling over the trails and mean you don’t need to fabricate new forks for for a months riding..

All that is fine as is glitter in sealant so long as its a few people… whereas black pepper in sealant is a terrible idea.. its extremely toxic to many rodents…

The PROBLEM is pushing recycling as a panacea…. washing machine/printer/whatever broken? Why fix it when its cheaper to buy a new one from China? The whole recycling business is based on not making people feel guilty for screwing the environment…

Recycling companies don’t even have to comply with the same rules as other industries. Paper recycling plants can pump toxic waste into drinking water and there is nothing a water company can do to stop it. (unless things changed very drastically in the last decade)

it doesn’t work for other glass though unless different manufacturers get together and agree on standard bottles and have some way of collecting them intact to return. Probably too complex.

So why did it used to work? When I was a kid almost all drinks came in glass bottles from cordials to even fizzy drinks. Back then there were way more companies making drinks as well.
I used to go round with my go-cart and collect bottles to get the 2d or whatever back…

Even if the glass is broken it can be recycled at a far lower energy cost than making new glass.

p.s. Bob also thinks he’s doing good by composting all the remaining rubbery cucumbers. But this actually means even more emissions as more cucumbers had to be grown for him and transported to the greengrocer etc.

Forgot to say but our compost grows the next summer’s cucumbers…(beans, peas, spuds, carrots..etc,)