Environment

UK Recycling industry slumps

by Amy Judd | November 14, 2008 at 01:34 pm

307 views | 7 Recommendations | 5 comments

Recycling firms in the UK are feeling the effects of the recession. It was only a few months ago that the industry was booming, and 9 out of 10 town halls were ahead of their recycling targets, and were on track to recycle 40% of household waste by 2010.

However, now that it is National Recycling Week, the industy in the UK has completely ground to a halt.

The plunge in prices was down to a sudden fall in demand for recycled materials, particularly from China, as manufacturers reduced their output in line with the global economic downturn.

In one fell swoop it rendered waste paper, aluminium cans and plastic bottles as good as worthless, and has left the UK recycling industry and local authorities reeling.

Paul White, who runs Norfolk-based waste paper merchants MW White, says the crisis is the worst he's seen in the 35 years he's been involved in running the family business.

"Six weeks ago you could sell anything you could lay your hands on," he says. "Prices were steady and in some cases rising. Six weeks later the market is decimated. It was an unbelievable turnaround in such a short space of time."

The industry and local authorities alike were taken by surprise and now there's a growing mountain of waste with no buyers to take it off their hands. "There's nowhere for these materials to go at the moment," said Steve Eminton of LetsRecycle.com. "It's rapidly becoming a serious problem."

The situation is likely to get worse by Christmas as waste only increases over the holiday season.
Recycling of household waste has gone up, but with plants unable to collect any more recycling, it is only a matter of time before people revert back to their old ways and stop recycling all together.

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Paschen

at 19:22 on November 14th, 2008

People will have to learn to take thing back into their own hands and become more self relied as well as more responsible again, following the tree R's right to the letter and right in their own back yard.

Ewanmac

at 02:41 on November 15th, 2008

I'd have to disagree, having visited two Scottish recycling plants in the past six weeks, I'd say the industry appears to be quite buoyant. Both companies spoke of recycling 97%-98% with only 2%-3% going to landfill. Both have major contracts worldwide, particularly with glass reclaim for use in new televisions.

Ewanmac has contributed a photo to this story.

gerrypopplestone

at 19:13 on November 16th, 2008

Our recycle achievements are disgustingly low! And the landfill sites being used at present are to be heavily taxed in future in order to encourage more recycling. Yet my local authority (Lambeth, south of the river Thames) allows us to recycle so little! Its all so badly organised! I'm not surprised the bottom has fallen out of the market (that's a bit of a non-sequitor, I know!).

C S Friedlos (not verified)

at 12:24 on November 17th, 2008

As we see that our recyclables have been exported all along and now there is no market abroad we are saddled with our waste which will probably end up in landfill!

But its all been a big con anyway, there can be no environemntal benefits by sending our waste far abroad, where much of it is just dumped in unregulated landfills.

There are virtually no complete 'closed loop' recycling facilities in the UK apart from glass recycling which is also a sham, what happened to our reusable glassware systems?

Most recycling is just Greenwash and always has been!