RSS
Consume, waste, dispose. Does the UK need to take more responsibility?
Posted by Claire Spencer (@thedancingflea)
Tuesday, 15th December 2009
As UK consumers have become more affluent, they have become increasingly able to buy more products, dispose of them or parts of them where necessary/desirable, and replace them more quickly – thereby increasing the waste emissions associated with total consumption in the UK. But waste emissions associated with production in the region have also reduced, and this is largely because the UK does not produce everything it consumes. This much is clear from the UK’s current trade deficit for goods, which stood at £7.2bn at the end of the third quarter of 2009. In addition, it should be noted that a significant portion of the waste the UK does produce isshipped elsewhere, either for recycling, landfill or incineration. This whole situation is illustrated in microcosm in the example of the Emma Mærsk (pictured below), a giant Danish container ship, which in November 2006 docked at Felixstowe to deliver a boatload of China-manufactured consumer goods, and returned to China laden with products for disposal and recycling.
But can this continue indefinitely? In some respects, the practice of outsourcing our waste emissions does have some sustainable merit. For example, sending rubbish to China for recycling produces less carbon dioxide than would be produced by incinerating it in the UK. Indeed, Marcus Gover, director of market development at WRAP, told The Telegraph that even shipping these materials by more than 10,000 miles produces less carbon dioxide than sending them to landfill in the UK or producing brand-new materials. However, this particular practice is proving to be unsustainable in a number of ways. Notably, a ban on the import of mixed plastics came into force on 1 June 2008, driven by the then upcoming Beijing Olympic Games. More recently, and more seriously, China’s lucrative recycling industry has been hit hard by declining global demand for packaging. Without that demand the UK, which sends as much as a third of its recycling to China, needs to find another way of disposing of or reusing its plastic waste.
Sending our waste to landfill or to incineration in the UK are both options for disposal, but perhaps not sustainable options going forward. The adverse effects associated with landfill sites are numerous – soil contamination is commonplace, and the potentially more serious contamination of groundwater and/or aquifers is also a risk. Further, as organic waste breaks down, one of the by-products is methane gas – a greenhouse gas with 25 times the impact on temperature of a carbon dioxide emission of the same mass over a 100-year period. Methane (eventually) breaks down into water and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. As such, increasing the amount of waste we send to landfill, regardless of where we send it, will increase the amount of methane and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. And as we are all aware, it is necessary to drastically reduce the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere – not increase them.
Further, sending all of the UK’s waste to landfill is not economically viable either, and this is particularly clear in the area of biodegradable waste. The EU Landfill Directive (1999/31/EC) stipulates that biodegradable municipal solid waste going to landfill must be reduced to 75 percent of 1995 levels by the end of 2006, to 50 percent by the end of 2009, and to 35 percent by the end of 2016. The UK, due to its initially poor recycling record, was given a four year extension – so its new deadlines are 2010, 2013 and 2020. However, four years does not seem to have been enough, and recent figures from the Local Government Association (LGA) show that the UK is still sending more waste to landfill than any other EU member state – 19.9 million tonnes. Consequently, the LGA warn that there is a “serious risk” that the UK will miss its 2013 target. The penalty for failing to meet the target is a fine, which the government estimates may be in the region of several hundred million pounds. It is not sustainable for the UK to pay out hundreds of millions of pounds every four years – even if it were an environmentally sustainable practice, which it is not.
Clearly then, our current rate of consumption and the wastage that is attached to that consumption are unsustainable on both an economic and environmental level – but there has been both recognition of and action on this fact. To take just one very specific example, in April 2008, in (eventual) response to the EU Landfill Directive, the UK government dramatically increased the rate of landfill tax, in order to discourage the disposal of biodegradable waste into landfill, and to encourage it into anaerobic digestion or composting. Furthermore, figures from Defra indicate that the amount of per capita household rubbish in the UK fell steadily from 2002/3 to 2006/7 – and correspondingly, the amount of rubbish that was recycled or composted by the same households has increased steadily since 1983/4 until 2006/7. But this is not enough. The UK may be turning its back on its habits, but it is still some distance off some of its closest neighbours in the sustainability stakes. To use the example of biodegradable waste once more, Germany’s response to the EU Landfill Directive was swift and impressive – it managed to reduce the amount of biodegradable waste that it sent to landfill to just 5 percent of its 1993 levels. It managed this feat by compelling half of all households to separate biodegradable waste, before sending it off for anaerobic digestion or composting. Furthermore, any remaining municipal waste has to be incinerated, or reused as a fuel or rendered safe enough to return to the land.
We can’t continue as we have been. The Global Footprint Network estimated in a 2008 study that the human race was using up the equivalent of 1.4 planet Earths. So in 2008, the human race used resources and created waste at a rate 40 percent greater than the annual resources of the Earth. It is likely that this effect will only get worse – the UN has estimated that the human population of Earth is set to increase from 6.7 billion to 9 billion by 2050. As such, UK businesses, local authorities and consumers will have to change their consumption and disposal habits, either by choice or by legislative force, or else face the consequences of unsustainable living in the years to come.
