Britain’s recycling waste is being wasted

Individuals’ efforts to do the world good by recycling are being undermined by councils, who are either dumping as much as 200,000 tonnes of waste set aside for recycling in landfills, or incinerating it.

75% of councils have been found to be throwing away their recycling waste, and it has been warned that global economic conditions are set to make this situation worse.

Usually the local councils would sell on the waste after collecting it from kerbside, but with the credit crunch biting hard, finding buyers to take on the recycling is getting harder and harder, whilst prices have fallen dramatically.

Christmas will mean a sharp upturn in the number of paper and plastic products in need of recycling, with children everywhere discarding wrappings and boxes in a rush to get to their toys.

Councils have threatened fines for those not following what can be strict recycling rules in some places.

But despite this, it is the councils themselves that are most likely to throw away such items as paper, plastic bottles and scrap metal, 10% of which is getting dumped rather than recycled.

With 200,000 tonnes of recycling set to be dumped or incinerated you have to wonder just what incentive there is for households to spend time organising their recycling.