Myth Buster

Recycling and misconceptions unfortunately go hand in hand. We’ve listed some common myths below together with the reality.

Everything goes into landfill regardless of how you throw it away (it’s just about being ‘seen’ to do the right thing)

The amount of and type of waste that goes to landfill is very carefully monitored. Deliberately dumping rubbish that’s been collected for recycling is actually a criminal offence, the penalties of which are heavy fines or even prison sentences.

What is often not realised is that just a single Pyrex dish or piece of china in a glass bank will contaminate the glass and potentially make the whole load unusable. The vast majority of loads are fine and end up being processed, but unfortunately sometimes contamination is too great and the items cannot be recovered for recycling.

Plastic is exported to China and dumped in landfill sites there.

In order to sustain our recycling collections and prevent materials being disposed of in landfill, secure and sustainable markets for reprocessing must be sought and utilized. These markets require a guaranteed supply of good quality, clean and sorted materials in sufficient quantities to maintain the investment and infrastructure required to reprocess materials.

The global economy is such that materials are currently sent from the UK for reprocessing in China because this is where the manufacturing demand is for plastic.

China is a prolific producer of plastic products, most of which are destined for European and UK consumers. China has a very limited supply of raw materials; they therefore demand phenomenal amounts of post consumer plastic that can be used to make new plastic products.

The same containers used to ship the plastic bottles to China are those that brought plastic products into the UK for our consumption in the first instance. Returning to China they are filled with clean, sorted plastic bottles. The containers would otherwise return empty, therefore no additional journeys are involved in this recycling and recovery operation. Shipping companies also require ballast to safely float their ships, so loading with recyclate provides a practical solution as well as an economic and environmental one.

The export of single source materials for recycling is lawful, controlled by strict legislation and enforced by the Environment Agency.

Recycling uses more energy and creates more pollution.

Not true. On average the process of recycling and making products from recycled material uses 25% less energy and creates 75% less pollution than making things from new, raw materials. It’s also worth remembering that recycling is not just about energy and pollution. It helps preserve earth’s natural resources and minimises the need for ugly landfills.

My friend says that in their area recycled waste all gets tipped into the same rubbish lorry making their efforts to separate out their waste pointless.

Modern refuse collection vehicles often have two, sometimes three compartments into which different types of waste are tipped. This is not something you would instantly know without looking deep inside the back of them. Sometimes the same vehicle is used to collect different types of waste. For example one vehicle may collect all the non-recyclable rubbish and take this to the landfill site and then return to collect all the garden waste and take that to the composting plant.