www.letsrecycle.com

Peter Jones, principle consultant at Eunomia, shares his thoughts on the government's "rather scaled back" Simpler Recycling announcement.

Thread:

Peter Howe via groups.io

29 Oct 2023, 19:58 (15 hours ago)

to UKWIN@groups.io

Although I entirely concur this is quite a step in the right direction but still work in progress. My concern is the fudge that could be made with the mountain of plastic that will follow. And even if a sizeable proportion does get recycled, this can only happen for a limited amount of times before that plastic can no longer reform. So will they pyrolisis it - clearly not a great option & not much different to incineration. Or will we follow the German example & export the problem to Asia or Africa with all the ecological disaster that that represents ?

If we want to change business habits, we need to remove the 'get out of jail' clauses & pass legislation creating an export ban on waste & especially plastic so the true economic & ecological cost of plastic is felt. Then we may have those reuse schemes in abundance, removal of packaging entirely & metal & cardboard & paper replacing plastic. This I know is not a panacea but it does make for a more manageable & sustainable system while we await for innovation to offer us better sustainable alternatives.