Here are some facts about waste:
- Municipal Waste means household waste, litter, tip waste, recycling bank waste, park waste, council office waste and some shop and light industry waste (where collected by a council)
- 90% of this Municipal Waste comes from our homes.
- In the UK during the financial year 1997-1998, there were 27 million tonnes of Municipal Waste dealt with by local authorities ö over 24 million tonnes of all this came from our homes.
- This is equal to 22kg or just over 48lb per home per week right across the country. Put another way it amounts to 500kg (half a tonne) per person per year. Or the weight of 2 mini cars for a 4 person family every year.
- The amount of waste produced is increasing by 3% by weight per year, every year.
- The UK recycling rate in 1997/8 was around 8%
- In Warwickshire it is currently around 10%
Why recycle waste?
On the practical side, recycling saves resources, energy and disposal costs. Most of the materials that we use in daily life (steel, aluminium, plastic) are all themselves derivatives of raw materials mined from the earth and being depleted at an ever-increasing rate. Even those resources that we think of as 'naturally renewable', like paper from wood, are being produced at unsustainable rates. Recycling these materials diminishes the rate at which they need to be mined or exploited. Recycling often also diminishes the amount of energy needed to produce new products - thus saving non-renewable fuel resources. Recycling reduces the amount of waste produced. All waste needs to be disposed of in some way and it is well known that 90% or more of household waste is sent to landfill in the UK - enough to fill the Albert Hall every hour! Coupled to this waste disposal is a range of environmental problems such as dust, water and even noise pollution. Household waste even produces a greenhouse gas (methane) in large quantities. On the practical side alone recycling makes sense.
And on the ethical side? Here we should be asking ourselves in what condition our descendants are likely to find our planet? Are they likely to look on us as generous benefactors, or as seems increasingly likely, wasteful consumers and despoilers of the environment. Will we even leave them a legacy on which they can enjoy the same standard of living as we do today or a denuded landscape with piles of our waste in and on it? If the future is to far away, we might instead ask if it is right that those enjoying high standards of living produce most of the waste, which has a disproportionate impact on those with the poorest living standards and who cannot afford to avoid it but have to live with it. From an ethical viewpoint, the recycling group therefore believes we are morally obliged to reduce the amount of waste we produce.
The Leamington and Warwick Recycling Group aims to begin addressing these issues on a local level. Key issues for the recycling group include the reduction of the amount of plastic ending up in landfill and kerbside separation of household rubbish. It is also important to monitor the performance of the council and to hold them to the re-cycling targets they have been set by national government.