Where Does Our Waste Go?

This is rubbish. 

How many things do you dispose of a day? A couple of teabags? 1 or 2 wrappers from lunch or a coffee cup from pret which helped carry you through to the afternoon? Maybe a bottle of wine in the evening shared with a friend. You may even have made the conscious effort of separating them into food-waste, recycling and general rubbish. It is easy for us to fill up our bin bags each week, drop them off at our local spot and then never think about what happens to them again. Surely they’re no longer our responsibility once they’re part of ‘council property’. However, these bags of waste don’t just disappear, they are now a part of the 27million tonnes that households produce yearly in the UK, which circulate the waste industry.

The Journey of my Rubbish

Once you’ve disposed of your bin bags at whichever location your local bins are, they get collected by the council, are packed and loaded onto trucks and later into containers which are sent to various locations. The clear, recycling bin bags are sent off to recycling plants or MRFs (Material Recovery Facilities) which sort your recycling into groups of different materials. These can then be reduced to their original raw form and turned into a new item (recycled) or converted into energy. Gardening and food waste bins often go to composting stations where they are turned into compost which can be repackaged and sold. Sounds great right?

Unfortunately, there is a lot of recycling that ends up in landfill. Any form of contamination can cause the whole bag to be rejected from the recycling process and sent to landfill sites, where the majority of black, general waste bin bags end up. In 2018 there were a recorded 500,000 tonnes of recycling sent to landfill due to contamination. This can come in the form of incorrect items, recyclable items which haven't been washed properly, so keep your greasy pizza boxes out of the recycling bin.

In Edinburgh, all waste goes to an energy Recovery Facility at Millerhill which avoids landfill entirely and concentrates on turning disposed rubbish from the city into energy. Food waste generally ends up at a Biogen Plant which is also turned into electricity!

Landfill

The main method of waste disposal used in the UK is landfill. 57% of all UK waste ends up in these sites where large holes in the ground are filled with rubbish and covered over. These holes are lined with clay and other sealant materials to prevent pollutants escaping, however, it has been debated how sustainable hiding our rubbish in the ground really is.

The Truth about Waste

Although there are systems in place to help reduce the amount of rubbish being buried, they are not yet efficient enough (at least in the UK) to deal with the volume of which we consume and dispose of materials. According to the BBC, roughly ⅔ of all plastic waste in the UK is shipped abroad, currently the most common recipient country being Malaysia. The issue with shipping waste abroad however, is that firstly, no country wants to be treated as the world’s dumping ground, and secondly, many of these shipments which are meant to be recycled there are actually dumped or incinerated instead, therefore, adding to the environmental damage caused by waste disposal. 

If you want to read more about this phenomenon I recommend the Guardian Article 'Plastic recycling is a myth': what really happens to your rubbish? as it highlights the bigger picture when it comes to the global waste industry. 

However, it’s not all bad news, as of 2020 the ‘Environmental Bill’ has been introduced to create a formal process of monitoring and controlling waste disposal. The aim is to increase the efficiency of our products and materials, therefore encouraging the reusing of items for consumers while also reducing plastic waste and increasing rates of recycling due to ease and better technology to handle the sheer volume of our rubbish. 

All in all don't be discouraged, recycling is not a worthless activity you take part in weekly. Although we still have far to go over the next year with the introduction of the bill there is hope for a more efficient waste disposal system, especially in the UK. 

Look out for our post on Instagram (@consciouschange.soc) explaining the different types of recycling and how to work out where everything goes. But if in doubt, don’t forget you can reuse and repair many items that you buy before needing to recycle.