Submerged Lands

Most offices in the UK now have some paper-shredding and collection service which picks up a company’s waste paper and shreds it, then takes it to a recycling plant. Although still a paid for service, eventually the cost of this service will come down, as more recycling facilities spring into action. Recycling is big business. Large companies also recycle plastic cups and cans and similar pickup services are available for them.

A greener image is a good way for multinationals to market their products. Green initiatives in their communities are something they can get involved with in a tax deductible way. Although the companies ultimately want to sell their products, they often benefit their local communities by this approach and everyone is a winner. Sponsoring initiatives like clean-up operations of riverbanks, public wasteland and parks can have a profound effect on how a large corporate is viewed by their community – after all, the company not only sells to their community, they also recruit from it. Who’d want to work for a waste-dumping company, who couldn’t care less about the environment or people’s health?

Positive Side Effects

One positive side effect of recycling bins gracing our streets and city centres is that traditionally there was more rubbish littering the streets. With the introduction of recycling bins and recycling schemes in Germany for example, people got money off their supermarket bill, if they returned plastic bottles. Many glass bottles have a similar “money back” aspect to them, making it worthwhile for people to return for recycling, rather than throwing the waste item into the street or into a public litter bin. While new things can be made out of old, the consumer benefits by having a small rebate filtering back to them straight away.

Negative Side Effects

Although some countries like the USA for example collect waste for “recycling” purposes, often this waste has ended up in landfill sites in China or Africa, where the countries’ poorest people live off searching through the waste for things that can still be resold. Even children are forced to live off the rubbish in this way. Mountains of our waste products have ended up thousands of miles away, instead of being recycled at home. Not only has the waste that was to be used for recycling now added to greenhouse gases by being dumped in landfill sites, it has added considerably to air pollution by being transported half way across the globe, by ship and by road.

Legislation

A number of governmental directives regulate waste management and the nationwide introduction of recycling centres, recycling schemes and recycling measures was handed over to councils who pondered for a long time over the best way to introduce such schemes. Ultimately only the threat of fines and higher costs for waste collection worked on householders’ change of heart towards recycling.

Recycling things and turning them into something new uses up far less energy than making something from fresh materials new. The reduced energy consumption benefits the environment and therefore mankind, as greenhouse gas emissions must come down if we want to avoid further global warming and catastrophic change of climate.

Local councils struggle to find the money for services with the reduction in taxes people pay because of high unemployment. Cutting down on waste by recycling makes long-term sense: economically as well as environmentally. Critics argue that we don’t have enough recycling plants to deal with all the waste, however, nobody wants incinerators at their doorstep and delays occur when local people take legal steps to prevent development of new landfill sites and incinerators. In the long run recycling plants will be the only way we can deal with waste disposal effectively.

Cutting down on packaging is a priority and must be tackled alongside better waste management.

Creating New Jobs

Building new recycling facilities will create new jobs but the process of recycling could be looked at for further job opportunities. Are we making the most of textile recycling or could it be used to spawn some cottage industries? Mail order via the internet is possible from the remotest locations, so making something out of recycled things is a way to kick-start local communities’ efforts in being more self-sufficient.

Artists have long embraced the concept of recycling and have re-used all sorts of materials to create works of art. Furniture can be made out of the most unlikely things such as battered supermarket trolleys. There are a large number of smaller businesses which could provide employment locally, if recycling schemes are taken a step further and are viewed as a way of life, not just the chore at the end of the week, when the waste collection takes away the heap of newspapers and the bag full of bottles.

Cutting Down on Waste

Energy consumption is a major factor in the increased emission of greenhouse gases. Creating new things using up materials such as metal for which the raw materials have to be mined first is extremely wasteful and adds so much to global warming that this concept is unsupportable. Eventually, established mines will run out of certain raw materials and the mining for them in new mines will be impossible owing to the high cost and perhaps the difficult terrain the metals are found in. Even if mines can be established, their location will add so much to the air pollution because of transportation, that greenhouse gas emissions will once again be far higher than from recycling.

Consumer Power

Consumers benefit from making an informed choice about the packing material used to keep their goods fresh and protected. If we don’t want to support excessive packaging where only materials were used which at present cannot be recycled, then we have the choice not to buy them. Eventually this will force manufacturers to employ packaging companies which use materials which can be recycled.

If we don’t want to see our tax bills rise out of all proportion, recycling is the price we’ll have to pay.

This old saying has such a lot of truth to it. Over the festive season my local street was full of shoppers not knowing what to get for their loved ones and friends, because their budget for buying presents was so restricted this year. Most High Street shops remained fairly empty – but the charity shops had a roaring trade!

Flushed with success of buying a bargain set of sheets in perfect condition for just £1.99, I entered a charity furniture store to hunt for further bargains.  Here people had donated their sofas and chairs, beds, fridges, tables and wardrobes.  At an incredibly cheap price including next day delivery I bought a bed, a wardrobe, headboard and coffee table.  There was absolutely nothing wrong with any of the items, no sign of wear or tear, yet somebody somewhere had decided it was time for these things to go.

In the past these items probably ended up at the local refuse tip, but now people are seeing the benefit in handing down furniture and electrical goods to others who’d like to use them for the duration of that items lifespan.

Learning from Others

Too often our politicians tell us that recycling is too difficult for some items or too expensive or not feasible for whatever reason – yet it is being done in other countries and has been done successfully for quite a number of years.  If it works in Scandinavia, in France, in Germany or Switzerland, why could it not work in other countries without the need for lengthy studies or councils wasting time before implementation?

Learning from the good example set by others and taking their advice how to avoid pitfalls surely isn’t beyond our local council’s capability? There are enough studies available to show what works and what doesn’t.

Keeping the Rubbish out of our Lives

In Wales people had their say of what they’d like to see banned from our environment and they chose plastic carrier bags as public enemy number one. Taking one’s own shopping bag when going out to get groceries is not difficult to do, nor is it hard for shops to provide alternatives, such as fabric bags or paper ones.

It is still an uphill struggle though to persuade supermarkets and retailers to cut down on packaging.  By avoiding the purchase of excessively packaged foods and goods we can cut down on the refuse we have to throw away every week – but our choice of purchase also educates supermarkets and High Street retailers, who keep a careful tally of our shopping behaviour with each and every purchase we make.

Shopping online has opened up a much greater choice for consumers and if our High Street shops refuse to move with the times, many manufacturers – particularly those serving niche markets – go online to sell their goods. They often try to have an advantage over traditional retailers by offering an environmentally friendly version of High Street products.

Less packaging, better labelling and above all environmentally sound ingredients or components are also part of the move to recycle as much as we can.