Dip in Recycling Raises Alarms in Scotland
Thursday, September 19, 2019 - 14:45:54
The latest statistics show that the proportion of domestic waste being sent for recycling by Scottish households actually fell last year, suggesting that more needs to be done to address this and make sure that the country can operate more sustainably going forwards.
BBC News reports that there was a 0.9 per cent reduction in recycling in 2018 compared with the previous 12 months, which is all the more worrying given that Scotland had seen a seven-year stint of unbroken recycling growth prior to this point.
There is some good news to be found here: chiefly the fact that both glass and plastic waste materials are being recycled in larger volumes than ever before. Unfortunately, this has gone hand in hand with a drop in the proportion of cardboard and paper products which are being sent for sustainable processing rather than simply being dumped at landfill sites.
Another positive spin which can be put on these potentially problematic figures is that while recycling rates were down, the total amount of waste being generated was also lower, sitting at 2.41 million tonnes, which represents a two per cent reduction year on year.
Industry expert Iain Gulland pointed out that promoting the need to recycle was obviously important, but ultimately he argued that it was perhaps more vital to cut waste output as a whole.
Recycling common packaging materials is a process which generates its own carbon footprint, so it is better to encourage manufacturers and retailers to cut down on the volumes of packaging which are included with products. This way it will be less relevant whether domestic customers dispose of their waste in a sustainable way, as there will simply be less of it in the first place, creating a more eco-friendly state of affairs.
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