Recycling

Last night there was an item on the news about recycling -- or should I say how this country doesn’t re-cycle. We, the public have been conditioned to sort waste for recycling, something I have taken to with avengance. Yet this article was highlighting that the price of all things being recycled (except glass) has dropped like a stone. Paper has fallen from £75 a ton to £15 a ton, and excepting glass, everything else has followed suit.

Why?

Simple, we don’t recycle, we gather it in, sort it out, bale it up and export it the Asia and China. That’s where it gets reprocessed. But now there’s a world recession and demand for their goods has dropped so they don’t need our waste to remanufacture.

So here’s my rant….

I believe with a passion that we should recycle wherever and whenever we can. So why the hell DO WE have to rely on OTHER COUNTRIES to recycle OUR WASTE? Those countries have 2 options:-
1. Buy in raw materials and manufacture the goods, or…
2. Buy in waste materials and remanufacture it into the goods….

Commercial logic says that if they choose to buy in waste and remanufacture then it is for one reason and one reason only, which is, that it is cheaper to do it that way! So why are we letting them make the profit?

The article last night stated that locals authorities would be loosing money because they would have to pay for storage of the baled up waste products until the market for them picks up. THAT SHOULD NOT BE THE CASE! We should be doing the recycling into base, useable material which can be used by manufacturers anywhere in the world. Instead we OFFLOAD our waste without taking any profit out of it. No wonder this country is in the state it is!