recycling facts

Did you know that the UK has a target to recycle 50% of our waste in 2020 and while we are at about 45%, we have been at an average of 45% for the last few years? In the UK, we are throwing out around 26 million tonnes of waste per year – about the same amount as 260 large cruise ships. Of that, 12 million tonnes is recycled whilst 14 million tonnes is sent to landfill / incinerated.

However, the items we may put in our recycling bin, may not always end up where we are hoping. In 2018, 500,000 tonnes of recycled waste was sent to landfill or to be incinerated because it contained items that shouldn’t have been there. A blue whale weighs about 140 tonnes – so the UK is sending about the weight of 3,571 blue whales to landfill or incineration because we are putting the wrong things in our recycling bins. In the US, recycling diverts 32% of waste from landfill - more than 60 million tonnes every year. That is the equivelant of 165 Empire State Buildings worth of weight (based on the Empire State Building weighing 365,000 tonnes).

There is a term circular economy vs linear ceconomy. At the moment we are very much linear economy - packaging is created with the sole purpose of being used once and discarded. We take the resources from the land, make an item, use it and then dispose of it. Recycling is a start into a more circular economy where we make an item from old items, use them and then recycle them to be remade into something else.

It takes less energy to recycle and repurpose materials already in use, than to mine and create virgin materials. For example:

• Recycling a single glass bottle saves enough energy to power a laptop for 30 minutes. Imagine what could happen with all those bottles after a party?!

• Recycling a single aluminium can will save enough energy to power a TV for up to 3 hours

• Recycling a single plastic bottle can save enough energy to power a lightbulb for approx 3 hours

• It requires 70% more energy to make paper from raw materials vs from recycled paper

history of recycling

Recycling isn’t a new concept - it has been around in some shape or another for thousands of years. Back in the Roman times for example, bronze coins were recycled into statues, or old bronze statues into other statues, coins and weapons. According to a study in the Journal of Archaeological Science, in the ancient city of Sagalassos - SW Turkey / part of the Byzantine Empire, there is archaeological evidence indicating that glass was being recycled as early as 330 AD. Due to a rise in popularity for reading books in the mid 18th Century, people would buy auctioned books with the purpose to reuse the paper within them for new books by the early 19th Centrury to try to keep up with the demand.

With the food rationing and shortage of every day products as a result of WWII, it wasn’t until 1939 when the popularity of recycling grew. However, it wasn’t until the 1960s that recycling in the UK became common place. This was due to drinks companies offering money back for the return of glass bottles.

Top tip: If you wish to understand more about this, I would recommend reading Tom Szacky’s book ‘The Future of Packaging’ for more information about recycling and the benefits of circular vs linear economy.