Date published: 2006/06/24
The Financial Times says (subscription service):
Recycling some materials can do more harm than good to the environment, a report has found.
Recycling materials such as glass can consume more energy than disposing of them in landfill sites, thereby increasing the production of greenhouse gases, according to a report on the waste management business published this week by Grant Thornton, the accountancy firm.
The report is strongly critical of the government's recycling targets, which focus on increasing the amount of rubbish that is recycled by weight, rather than by any other measure.
This ignores the impact of greenhouse gas emissions, which are widely regarded as the most important environmental concern because of their contribution to climate change, and because of the government's obligation to reduce such emissions under the Kyoto protocol.
Nigel Mattravers, senior manager at Grant Thornton, said: "The UK's waste policy has not addressed the impact on carbon dioxide levels and climate change."
Grant Thornton found the government's target of recycling 60 per cent of glass would be achieved by encouraging the grinding of the product, in order to manufacture a substitute for the sand used for architectural and filtration purposes.
But it said: "This energy-intensive recycling process generates more carbon dioxide than if the glass was sent to landfill."
The glass could be turned into bottles instead but is not because the supply of new green glass outweighs demand. The report found that if more alcoholic beverages were bottled in the UK rather than abroad this would change the balance, and the remainder of the excess bottles could be shipped abroad for re-melting.
It concluded: "[The current adverse] outcomes occur because financial instruments and policy interventions have been designed to encourage tonnage diversion from landfill, regardless of the carbon dioxide implications."
Hmmm, Grant Thornton would not normally be considered to be experts on any of this, but the (largely middle class) pro-recycling fanatics never provide any sums to justify the alleged advantages of recycling, so at least here we have one study. And it would be nice if more (unbiased) people looked into this. In Cambridge there is a special recycling pick-up just for plastic bottles, which are then shipped to China, and it's hard to believe the net benefit to the planet is positive here, given how much fuel has to be consumed just picking the stuff up. Of course the middle class (including so-called environmentalists) love recycling (rather than waste) targets, because it means they can continue to create huge amounts of waste and still pretend they are "saving the world".
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