Amazing Facts About Waste in the UK
The media often mentions topics about the waste that is being accumulated worldwide and the ever increasing need to recycle, reuse and reduce the amount of rubbish created.
According to the annual statistics for the UK, it is increasing its recycling rate with only 1% each year and some years the rate is negative. The current overall recycling rate is around 44% and the goal is to reach 50% by the end of 2020, a goal set by the whole European Union.
All of that sounds promising but when you look into more statistics, you start to doubt whether we are improving the waste management overall.
For example, the United Kingdom uses more woodland than the whole of Wales in order to produce all the paper used. Can you imagine that? Paper is one of the most recycled waste (around 65%) types but having in mind that around 90% of the Sunday magazines and newspapers are thrown out on the garbage, the recycling rate can be improved a lot. On top of that, only a third of the energy needed to produce paper from trees is needed for its recycling.
There is promising data as well, the milk bottles can be reused up to 13 times before being recycled. Another way to put it is that in 2003, the energy saved from recycling bottles was enough to power 10 space shuttle missions. Pretty cool, huh!
Around fifty years ago, we used 1/50th of the plastic we use today.
Let’s talk about the food we throw away. On average, households in the United Kingdom can save around 400 pounds from edible food that is thrown away on the rubbish. We could save around ten billion pounds from food that has been thrown out but was edible
Households have other ‘bad habits’ as well. For example, on average, each baby needs around 4000 nappies which all end up in a landfill. That means 7 million trees need to be cut down in order to produce all the decomposable nappies we use. And when UK citizens grow up, they still throw out their body weight in waste each seven weeks.
We should take an example from countries such as the Austria and Germany, which have recycling rates over 60%.
Did you know that we can save close to 36 million pounds out of the aluminium cans we throw out in landfills? That can add an additional 1600 government workers (firefighters, nurses, police officers)
Did you know that the average amount of plastic accumulated in the UK is close to 280 million tonnes or around 15 million plastic bottles each day? Compared to the U.S., which generates the staggering 25 million plastic bottles per hour, that is not much. But still, it is an alarming number.
Take into consideration that each year the amount of plastic used increases with 4%, which means we will double the plastic production in 25 years.
On another note, incinerating 10 million tonnes of rubbish could be done by one person when if the same amount was recycled, it could have opened over 35 jobs.
Reading such statistics may sound scary, and it should be! When pollution happens slowly, we do not see the damage it does around us. And often times we do not ‘see’ the way we pollute the environment as we go to work and go home and would never visit a landfill in our lifetime.
Here is the best advice for anyone who wants to reduce the waste they generate as much as possible. Hire a professional waste disposal company like the junk collection company in London that I’m using. It will not only save you time and money but will help you reuse, recycle and optimize your junk removal.
