The great recycling con trick

The great recycling con trick: How 12million tons of your carefully sorted waste is being dumped in foreign landfill sites

* Government vows to tighten inspections at ports to curb the problem

• Environment Agency orders councils to check on their contractors
  
• Waste sent to countries including China, Indonesia and India
  

By Steve Doughty PUBLISHED: 22:01, 5 April 2013

UPDATED: 10:30, 6 April 2013

Millions of tons of household rubbish painstakingly sorted by families for recycling is being dumped abroad.Whitehall
has admitted that waste from recycling bins is being shipped to
countries including China, India and Indonesia, where much of it ends up in landfill.

In papers
published by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs,
ministers concede that what happens to the 12million tons of 'green'
waste shipped abroad every year is largely beyond their control.


Household rubbish that has been sorted by families for recycling is being dumped in landfill sites across the world

The trade in sending rubbish
abroad – mainly to Asia – has doubled over the past decade, as councils
have increasingly turned to contractors to deal with mountains of waste
generated by compulsory recycling schemes.
The
law states that this rubbish should be recycled once it is sent abroad –
but Defra now admits that in some countries it is simply dumped.

The department, headed by Owen
Paterson, the Environment Secretary, said it plans to tighten
inspections at ports to curb the illegal trade in green waste.


Environment secretary Owen Paterson said that
Defra plans to tighten inspections at ports to curb the illegal trade of
green waste

The Government has always insisted
that household rubbish is carefully recycled – but the Daily Mail
revealed earlier this year that large amounts are deemed unusable by
recycling plants, and instead sent to landfill. Now the Environment
Agency has confirmed that material sent to China, Indonesia and India is
also buried, rather than recycled.
As
well as household rubbish, Defra admitted that other waste dumped
abroad includes used tyres, sent to China, and discarded televisions and
computers, which end up in West Africa.
Doretta Cocks, of the Campaign for Weekly Waste Collections, said: 'People will be very shocked by this development.
'Most
people believe their rubbish is recycled in this country. Now it turns
out there are container ships coming here from China filled with
televisions and computers … and going home stacked with containers
filled with our recycled rubbish. That is shameful.'
The
revelation comes after Defra launched a consultation with the waste
industry about new recycling rules. Consultation documents concede that
waste is being dumped abroad, although 'the exact extent of illegal
shipping is unknown'.
If
stricter checks were introduced, the department says 'our expectations
are that the amount of waste exported illegally and then dumped in
developing countries would reduce'.
The
Environment Agency has asked councils to improve the quality of the
recycling they collect, and to check what their contractors are doing
with it.
It has told local
authorities: 'In the UK and the EU, increasing amounts of waste
collected for recycling are sent overseas for reprocessing. Much of the
waste collected from households … will ultimately be exported.
'The
majority of illegal waste exports we have intercepted include waste
originally collected by or on behalf of local authorities via household
recycling collection services.
'We
are particularly concerned about illegal exports of mixed household
waste mis-described as paper or plastic. These typically derive from
poorly-performing household collection and sorting systems.'




Among the rubbish that is dumped abroad used tyres are sent to China and discarded TVs and computers go to West China

The news that household
recycling is being dumped in developing countries follows the admission
by Defra in February that recycling claims are exaggerated.
Official
figures say 43 per cent of all the household rubbish collected is
recycled – but the ministry said that, in reality, processors reject
most recyclable material, which then often ends up in landfill sites.
Defra
has also acknowledged that the main reason for compulsory recycling
schemes is not lack of landfill space or the need to combat climate
change, but instead the demands of the EU's Waste Framework Directive,
the latest version of which came into force last year.
Household
recycling became the norm after Tony Blair's Labour government
encouraged councils to pick up non-recyclable refuse every two weeks.
Mrs
Cocks said: 'There has always been a big question mark over the
recycling movement of the past decade. I fear we are now going to come
under greater pressure to produce purer materials for recycling.
'We have not had proper rubbish collections for a decade, but I think soon we will get monthly collections.'




Defra is due to produce new plans for household 'waste prevention' by the end of the year.
A
spokesman for the department said: 'Trade in recyclable materials is a
global market and we want to see UK businesses make money from it to
help boost our economy. We would like to see our own recycling industry
grow so that we can grasp this opportunity with both hands.'
■ England is set to become the only part of the UK where plastic bags are given away free of charge.
Northern
Ireland will introduce a 5p plastic bag tax next week. A similar levy
was imposed in Wales in October 2011, resulting in supermarkets giving
away 96 per cent fewer bags.
Scotland
is also pressing ahead with plans to charge for plastic bags, leaving
England as the last country with no firm proposals to tackle the
problem.
Last month
Oscar-winning actor Jeremy Irons backed the Daily Mail's Banish the Bags
campaign, which calls on companies and politicians to reduce the number
of plastic bags blighting our countryside and rivers.


Source:-
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2304773/The-great-recycling-trick-How-carefully-sorted-waste-dumped-abroad.html