Diminishing returns...

Once waste is in place, there’s a range of ways to manage it which avoid the last-ditch choice of sitcking it in the ground: here, in roughly sustainable order, is a step-by-step slide through the options.

Re-use

Top of the traditional ‘waste hierarchy’ comes re-use and recycling. While recycling involves re-manufacture into new goods, ‘re-use’ implies no further processing apart from any necessary cleaning. There is no shortage of examples here, from the mundane to the sophisticated.

The glass milk bottle used for doorstep deliveries is the most-quoted example of re-use — and one which also shows up its limitations in changing times. When dairies were small and local, taking back the empties for cleaning and refilling made total environmental sense. But centralised purchasing of milk has made the environmental balance sheet of ‘takeback’ more difficult to assess, and in any case changed consumer habits mean that most milk is now bought direct rather than delivered.

Fast forward to the present, and one of the strongest drivers for re-use comes from EU legislation, such as the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive (or WEEE as it’s engagingly known) — which will prompt an increase in the re-use and refurbishment of items as varied as computers, washing machines, toasters — and of course, mobile phones. More than 25 million electrical and electronic appliances are currently thrown away by UK households each year. There is growing optimism that dismantling items for re-use and refurbishment may offer new openings for skilled employment, perhaps replacing overseas jobs in manufacturing.

Indeed, this is already happening, thanks to the Renew Project. Set up in 1998 as a pilot in Gateshead, Renew is designed to train and employ disadvantaged people in the community whilst at the same time promoting effective recycling and helping very low income households. It works like this: Comet give Renew their white kitchen goods returns (i.e. the cookers, washing machines and fridges you take back to them when you buy a new one). Then the trainees refurbish and repair them to be resold at affordable rates to low income households. A second plant opened in Leeds last year in partnership with Remploy (the UK’s largest employer of disabled people) and Scope charity shops, who provide the resell outlet.

National expansion is on the cards thanks to recent funding by the SITA Environment Trust, under the Landfill Tax Credit Scheme. By 2005 Renew aim to have developed 15 factories across the country that will together employ 600 people and process up to half a million white goods per year.

Of all the gadgets covered by the WEEE Directive, mobile phones are perhaps the most notorious. It’s estimated that there are a cool 90 million redundant mobiles in the UK already. Ideally, they should be reused. Many are perfectly serviceable: simply out of date. Under one scheme, mobiles are enabled for 999 calls only and distributed (free) to families at risk.

Further opportunities for re-use may come from an expansion of waste exchanges, such as that run by Waste Alert (a Waste Watch project), which allows businesses and organisations to advertise goods they want to get rid of (or goods they want) in a bi-monthly publication. A range of goods are ‘exchanged’ for little or no cost, including general office and IT equipment, paper, acrylic and cinema seats. Wood offcuts are also passed to an outdoor field centre that makes nesting boxes out of them. This kind of scheme reduces waste disposal costs and costs of purchasing into the bargain (www.wastealert.co.uk).

At the more mundane end of the spectrum, the UK government is considering following the Irish example and introducing a tax on plastic carrier bags. Used by the billion, these may only account for tiny amounts of resources individually, but together represent a highly visible heap of waste. A number of different reduction schemes have been tried, such as Sainsbury’s ‘penny back’ scheme or Waitrose’s ‘Bag for Life’ (a durable variety costing customers 10p, to whom Waitrose sold 2 million last year, sending more than 200 tonnes of used ones to a recycling plant in Dumfries for reprocessing into Plaswood, a plastic wood substitute).

It’s not without its controversial side. David Catton, Sainsbury’s packaging optimisation manager (yes, there is indeed such a post), wonders: "if it results in a switch to paper bags instead, will that be any friendlier to the environment?" Others have pointed to research showing that many people re-use carrier bags as bin liners around the house. If they all now switch to buying bin liners, the net result could be an increase in resource consumption, since the bin liners will be single use where the carrier bags were being re-used. None of this necessarily argues against the carrier bag tax — indeed, it might instead be a powerful argument for extending it to other bags! But it does point up once more the fact that initiatives to encourage waste minimisation only make sense if they are part of a bigger plan. Then again, you have to start somewhere...

Re-use is, after all, still part of our culture: from car boot sales to swish antiques fairs, from E-bay style online auctions to architectural salvage, we are most certainly not inherently averse to the idea itself.

Recycling

is what most people think of if you ask about rubbish. Recycling allows secondary materials to be made into new goods, with the double benefit of reducing demand for virgin resources and pressure on disposal sites. And the recycling of some materials such as batteries keeps harmful components out of landfills or incinerators.

We have a national target to recycle 25% of our household waste by 2005 (rising to 33% by 2015), but we are starting from a low of just 11%. Last year around 20 of the best-performing local authorities recycled more than one-fifth of their waste, with Dorset the pick of the bunch at 31%. The majority were way below this (with eight managing a paltry — if at least honest — 1%). Friends of the Earth is calling for the government to require all local authorities to set up ‘doorstep collection’ schemes, since research has shown that (surprise, surprise) this is the best way to get public co-operation.

Successful recycling relies on the materials being clean and properly segregated, as well as on the existence of a sorting and processing facility at a reasonable distance. While the UK has paper, glass and metal recycling facilities, they have not for the most part been strategically sited, and for Cornish recyclables to be driven several hundred miles to South Yorkshire or North Wales doesn’t make much environmental sense. As recycling collections increase, and more reprocessing capacity develops, then the ‘waste miles’ should fall.

The last part of the recycling equation is the market for goods made from reclaimed materials. There is often talk of ‘closed loop’ recycling, which turns old metal cans or bottles into new ones, but in reality, recycling something into a new version of itself is not inherently better than recycling steel cans into washing machines, or scrap glass into aggregate.

One strikingly successful example of the latter can be found at Rolla Downtown Airport, Missouri, which has a runway made from Glasphalt, an asphalt mixture that substitutes crushed waste glass (400 tons for some of the usual aggregate. Glasphalt is widely used on streets and parking lots in other locations, but it has never before been applied to an airport runway, although it’s well suited to the task: the glass particles make it more reflective and visible, and it dries faster than conventional surfaces after rain. Trials of ‘glass paint’ are also being conducted, with titanium replaced with finely-ground glass to see if it is more reflective than ordinary paint.

In the UK, we drink large quantities of imported wine, which creates a huge surplus of green glass, because most of the new goods we package in glass (such as whisky, jam and pickles) use the clear variety. We also have large quantities of mixed waste glass (amber, green and blue) resulting from poor sorting by householders. In response, RMC Aggregates has developed a roadbase material using up to 30% recycled glass as substitution for primary aggregates. This has provided local authorities and the commercial sector with a vital outlet for surplus waste glass. In 2001, RMC’s achievements were recognised when they became joint winners of the R&D category of the ‘Quality in Construction’ Awards. The introduction of a virgin aggregates tax in April this year should help further to encourage alternative uses such as this.

Meanwhile, the Capitals Group has recently invested a substantial £4.8 million into glass recycling. Glass is to be

collected from London’s pubs, clubs, restaurants and offices and reprocessed locally, diverting 40,000 tonnes of glass into different markets over the next two years. The recycled product will be used for a wide range of construction purposes including sharp sand, roadstone and shotblasting.

Mobile phones are another potential goldmine (literally!) for recyclers. If discarded, they not only constitute a whole new hazardous waste stream, but one estimated to contain more than £20 million of precious metals. About half the materials in an average mobile are recyclable, including copper (the commonest metal used) and silver, but also minute yet valuable quantities of palladium and even gold (though at 0.4kg per 3.5 tonnes of phones processed, you’re not going to get rich mining your old mobile this way!). The batteries can also be recycled. Some of the phones are refurbished for sale in developing countries; others taken apart for their components to be reused or recycled. Now reprocessor XS Tronix is working with electronics retailer Comet and supermarket chain Tesco to take back customers’ unwanted mobiles via a pre-paid envelope [see GF32, p28].

It’s not just electronics goods that urgently need their lives extending. Each year in the UK we have to deal with around 1.8 million tonnes of abandoned and discarded cars. Scrap metal merchants have, for many years, reclaimed the steel. Now new regulations require that all scrapped vehicles are stripped of their tyres, oil, battery, antifreeze and any other chemicals or gases before dismantling at approved centres, prior to recycling. Steptoe in the 21st century will be a high tech operation. The new End of Life Vehicles (ELV) Directive makes dismantling and recycling compulsory. The thorny question of who should pay for the process has reared its head, with the government proposing that the last user — as opposed to the manufacturer — should pick up the tab. As well as the car bodies, around 50 million tyres are discarded in the UK each year. These offer a particular disposal challenge, since they are specifically designed to resist being degraded by the elements. With landfill now out of bounds, the search is on for viable alternatives, from artificial reefs and flood defences to rubber ‘crumb’ (mixed with asphalt for road and playground surfaces), or (more controversially) burned to recover energy, sometimes as fuel in cement kilns. Huddersfield based Intruplas Ltd is aiming to divert thousands of tyres from landfill by re-using them to make maintenance-free flat surfaces for everything from towpaths to car parks (see GF34, P42). Evading the issue of what to do with old tyres by stockpiling is not even a temporary solution: it has resulted in spectacular fires, polluting groundwater and air. One such fire in Powys, North Wales, in a stockpile of around 10 million scrap tyres, burned for nine years...

Sometimes markets for recycled materials are limited by outdated specifications which preclude the use of secondary raw materials even though, on a fitness for purpose basis, they are more than acceptable. If we’re to encourage recycling, manufacturers and regulators should make consideration of secondary material use a routine part of product specification. There are, for example, still some international and national standards which limit plastics use by requiring that only virgin polymers can be used in certain applications. "Recycled plastics have only recently been permitted in dustbin manufacture," Andrew Simmons of industry body RECOUP explained. Underground inspection chambers for drains, pipes or cabling made of recycled plastic instead of concrete have a 50% cost saving and a doubled life expectancy, as well as — ominously! — being chew-resistant.

B&Q are now leading the way in the retail sector, selling a number of recycled plastic products, including trellis panels made from polystyrene packaging taken back by sister company Comet when delivering white goods.

Given the fact that recycling is so widely assumed to be ‘doing the right thing’, it’s still something of a mystery that we recycle so little of our household waste, when even the most conservative estimates suggest that 35% is achievable. Fortunately, given that there is more industrial and commercial waste than household waste, industry is doing rather better - perhaps for simple economic reasons as well as compliance with regulations: for instance, UK industry recycled 48% of packaging last year.

Why not design packaging for recycling? That’s a frequent question, and on the surface a highly pertinent one. In the early-1990s, Germany introduced regulations aimed at achieving just that. Ground coffee was, at that, time, packaged in soft foil packs (made of a mixture of paper, aluminium foil and plastic film). Technically the foil packs could be recycled, but it made little sense economically or environmentally. In considering a change of material, metal and glass were obvious contenders because collection and reprocessing systems were already in place to recycle them. However...to deliver one year’s supply of coffee took 11,000 tonnes of the foil pack, but would take 120,000 tonnes of metal canisters and 470,000 tonnes of glass. Even if (optimistically!) 80% of the metal and glass packaging were recycled, around 24,000 tonnes of metal and 94,000 tonnes of glass would still remain for disposal: in other words, a whole lot more by weight and volume than the original non-recyclable foil packs.

Overall, recycling has an important part to play in a sustainable resource use programme, but while almost everything is recyclable in theory, in practice we should only recycle materials where it reduces resource consumption overall. As ever, it’s the big picture that counts.

Composting

has always been used by farmers and gardeners to provide free soil enrichment, a magical process that turns slimy cabbage leaves, teabags and potato peelings into black, crumbly stuff which puts nutrients back into the soil and reduces the need for artificial fertilisers — the manufacture and use of which have major environmental impacts.

Now local councils are encouraging householders to compost at home, so curbing the amount of waste which has to be collected. And contrary to some colourful recent press reports, we do not need a licence for our garden compost heaps! On a larger scale, composting should get a boost from the Landfill Directive, which requires all biodegradable waste to be diverted from landfill. Not everyone’s a home compost fanatic — and not everyone has gardens, so stand by for some serious expansion of larger facilities.

There’s no shortage of raw material: around a third of the household dustbin is kitchen and garden waste, which can be readily composted: another third is paper which, with a few caveats, is also compostable (although recycling would be the preferred option). Some local authorities are turning green waste into compost which they give away to residents; others sell it, and some use it as daily cover for landfill, to reduce the need to bring in other cover materials.

Incineration

is the last in the line — and there are many who think it shouldn’t feature at all. This is seriously hot potato territory. If you worry that waste is boring, you need only mention this sparky little term to dispel the notion. At present there are 11 incinerators in England and Wales, but plans are in hand for many more — although they will only be constructed in the face of fierce opposition, of the sort which triggered widespread demonstrations across the country on the recent ‘Global Day of Action’ against the practice.

Like any waste technology, of course, it has pluses and minuses. The latter include strong concerns about the health effects of emissions from burning waste, as well as the perceived competition between incineration and recycling. Chief among the emissions fears is dioxin — one of a family of chemicals produced by all combustion processes (such as garden bonfires and fireworks as well as metal smelting and coal burning). Opponents insist there is no wholly safe level of dioxins, and cite the precautionary principle as a reason for moving decisively away from incineration. Hence they are not persuaded by the argument that dioxin emissions from incinerators fell by 92% between 1990 and 1999, or that stricter limits still are about to be introduced.

For Friends of the Earth, incinerators not only pose a health threat: they also militate against more efficient resource use. According to FoE’s Mike Childs, "If paper, plastic and other resources were minimised and recycled as much as possible, then in most areas there would not be enough left to make incineration financially worthwhile. If there is less waste, a smaller incinerator is required. Since the costs of some pollution abatement equipment are the same irrespective of the plant to which they are fitted, and these can be a high proportion of the costs of a small incinerator, then that potentially makes small incinerators uneconomic."And so incineration as an option would melt away...

Some argue that it’s only those who stand to profit from incineration who have any grounds at all for being in favour of what they see as an essentially unsustainable technology — although that would presumably exclude Tim Brown of the National Society for Clean Air and Environmental Protection who believes that "incineration can often represent the best environmental option for waste disposal, providing it is part of an integrated system that also optimises reduction, re-use and recycling". Incinerators, he says, should be sized to deal only with the wastes that remain after recycling or composting.

The technology to burn waste has probably developed as much as that for computers and cars in the last 50 years, and its ability to deal with large volumes of waste, and to recover energy from it, appear to be on its side — but whether they’re sufficient to persuade a sceptical public must remain a very moot point. Some local authorities, such as Hampshire, continue to favour incineration; others, including South Gloucestershire, have won widespread plaudits for planning their entire waste strategy in such a way as to exclude the need for incinerators altogether.

The government hasn’t closed the door on the option, but in the words of Environment Minister Michael Meacher, "waste incineration is close to a last resort".

In the mix

For the time being it seems likely that waste management will include at least elements of all of these techniques — as well as landfill. Indeed, treatment processes such as recycling and incineration leave residues which are effectively a whole new set of wastes to deal with and, for these, landfill is usually the only option. Whichever the chosen method in any particular case, though, finding sites for all the facilities we need to sort and bale recyclables, compost organics, burn non-recyclables and landfill the residues is a major challenge — and one that can only get worse if waste volumes continue to rise.

19 July 2002

Maggie Thurgood