Recycling Information ...

The world's annual consumption of plastic materials has increased from around 5 million tonnes in the 1950s to nearly 100 million tonnes today. In the UK, a total of approximately 4.7 million tonnes of plastic products were used in various economic sectors in 2001. We produce and use 20 times more plastic today than we did 50 years ago!

 

Recycling Saves Landfill Space.
Americans are producing more waste with each passing year, most of which is hauled off and buried in landfills. What’s wrong with that? Well, it’s expensive and usually controversial to dig new landfills or to build new incinerators. Recycling is one way to reduce the amount of waste that is landfilled.

 

Recycling Can Save Energy.
It almost always takes less energy to make a product from recycled materials than it does to make it from new materials. Using recycled aluminum scrap to make new aluminum cans, for example, uses 95 percent less energy than making aluminum cans from bauxite ore, the raw material used to make aluminum. One exception to the recycling-saves-energy rule is plastics. Sometimes it takes more energy to recycle plastics than it does to use all new materials.

 

Recycling Can Reduce Air and Water Pollution.
Using aluminum scrap instead of bauxite ore to make new aluminum products cuts air and water pollution by 95 percent. If you want to do something for the environment, recycle those aluminum cans! 

 

Recycling Creates Jobs.
Recycling is estimated to create almost five times as many jobs as waste disposal. Recycling requires businesses that collect, haul, and process recyclables, as well as businesses that manufacture products from recycled materials. People employed in the recycling industry may be material sorters, truck drivers, sales representatives, process, engineers, or chemists. The National Recycling Coalition reports that recycling supports 1.1 million jobs in the U.S.

 

What happens to waste

People produce waste, it is a fact of life; a fact which we cannot change. However, what we can change is the how much we produce, how we manage it, and what we do with it.

Indeed, managing waste in a sustainable way, optimising recycling and re-use, as well as limiting production, forms a core part of Government policy to protect the environment.

This page outlines what is in place to help local authorities reach their targets, some of the support available for businesses to manage their waste more effectively, and how everyone can play a part in ensuring we work together towards a future much less reliant on sending vast amounts of waste to landfill.

The waste hierarchy is a useful framework that has become a cornerstone of sustainable waste management, setting out the order in which options for waste management should be considered based on environmental impact:

 

 

Useful Recycling Links

 

 

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