Hi Shattered Gambler
Very interesting questions - I have recently worked in this industry so I have a pretty good idea about what is going on here.
I suggest you get yourself a cup of tea/coffee and arm yourself with some choccy bickies before going any further!
Regarding the recycling lottery, this is actually symptomatic of how environmental legislation is implemented in the UK.
What happens is that the Government introduces a blunt policy instrument (in this case, this is the
Landfill Tax ) and it is down to individual authorities as to how best deal with these policies.
Every local authority has different priorities, political agendas etc, and a consequence of this is the myriad of different waste colection services that you see across the country.
This is not true of most EU Countries as they tend to have a centralist control system. This means that they have a more harmonised approach to environmental legislation than you see in the UK.
Most of the local authorities (although certainly not all)in the UK have outsourced their waste collection service to specialist companies
These companies typically arrange for a set length contract to collect the household refuse and the Council/contractor will negotiate key points such as collection days, what type of bins will be provided - some councils provide wheelie bins for recycling, others provide colour coded boxes, along with agreed targets and performance levels.
Contracts can be terminated by either party at any time although in practice if a local authority wishes to terminate a contract, it has to have a dossier on the contractor's failings.
Got through the choccy bickies yet?
There's more to come
What can actually be recycled is dependent on the contractor's MRF (Materials Recovery Facility) and how modern it is. Some councils now collect the plastic microwave food containers and harder plastics, but this is by no means uniform across the country.
In fact it does occur that neighbouring boroughs, who have the same contractor, have completely different recycling services.
As more modern MRFs come into use then the amount of stuff that can be recycled will increase.
Councils also have amenity tips - which aren't the same thing as MRFs - and can be operated by another company other than the household waste contractor.
One thing to be very aware of is whether your local authority sends landfill off for incineration - which is then used to produce electricity.
Many authorities have got long term contracts to supply landfill for this purpose and therefore have no incentive to increase recycling rates.
Some councils that use the box recycling service ratherthan colour coded wheelie bins are very particular about what goes into each recycling box.
The official reason why some authorities are fussy to what goes into the recycling is because of the end product after say the paper and cardboard is recycled.
The official reason that some councils use a box scheme for recycling is because that a given percentage of households in the borough have insufficient curtilage for two wheelie bins.
On your second cuppa yet?
So, onto the more important part - which is to follow the money.
Who gets the bonuses for achieving the recycling rates?
This goes to the waste collector companies, and they get the top whack if they achieve a certain figure (I believe this to be around 77%).
Therefore, once this threshold has been reached, there is no incentive to improve recycling rates further.
The councils hope to benefit by reducing their landfill tax burden - although in practice it doesn't always work out like this.
Is it the most "environmentally friendly" option?
No. The best option is not to create all of this unnecessary waste in the first place. The waste hierarchy is Reduce, Reuse and Recycle - the UK is on the bottom rung here.
Tess makes the valid point that as resource constraints become more apparent, then the probability is that more people will start to appraise what they actually need rather than buying lots of pointless stuff just for the sheer hell of it.
There are signs that this is happening already.
What would happen if supermarkets were obliged to take back ALL of the plastic packaging and give customers a deposit back?
Virtually everybody would be rushing back to your nearest Tescos (or whatever other big supermarket happens to be closest) dumping everything back. Stuff going to landfill would plummet.
This is extremely unlikely to happen though and has been added as a thought exercise.
I hope that answers your questions and hasn't put you off from posting other questions on here
Hope you haven't run out of tea/coffee in the meantime
A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools - Douglas Adams.
