Engineering: When recycling doesn’t cut it

 

Although recycling rates have increased in the UK, a new report has said that consuming less would be more productive.

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According to authors of a new Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) publication, the key to dealing with our escalating waste problem lies in changing our buying habits and our attitudes to consumption.

'Consumption: reducing, reusing and recycling', which accompanied a seminar in Belfast organised jointly with the Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister, Northern Ireland, says that the benefits of recycling risk being undermined by the sheer quantity of waste being generated.

If household waste output continues to rise by three per cent a year, the cost to the economy will be £3.2 billion and the amount of harmful methane emissions will double by 2020.

The report highlights the many ways that social science can contribute to waste policy development, either by devising initiatives, by providing tools to evaluate their relative effectiveness or by helping understand why they did or did not work.

Professor Ken Peattie, Director of the ESRC Centre for Business Relationships, Accountability, Sustainability and Society (BRASS), Cardiff University, described three projects which are linked to different aspects of waste reduction at the production stage and in consumption.

He added that the key tool in the development and implementation of consumption reduction policies is 'social marketing', which involves using commercial marketing techniques to influence their behaviour for the benefit of society as a whole.

Peattie explained that social marketing can be successful because it focuses on the target audience’s point of view, taking account of any emotional or physical barriers that may prevent people from changing their behaviour.

"Guilt messages are ineffective. A focus on the benefits of a greener lifestyle has been shown to be a better way to encourage people to reduce their consumption," the report said.

Reducing waste and increasing recycling and reuse

Ben Shaw, Senior Research Fellow from the Environment Group at the Policy Studies Institute, described international efforts to become more resource efficient by significantly reducing waste or achieving higher rates of recycling or reuse.

He said that despite recent improvements the UK is still a long way behind the best performing countries and regions where taxation and household waste charges have been used to reduce landfill.

However, even the toughest penalties have not been enough to prevent a significant accumulation of waste.

Shaw said that waste reduction needs to be tackled higher up the chain of production and consumption.

"Waste reduction must be a goal of UK environmental policy, and not tackled through waste policy alone," he added.

The report also gives examples of zero waste initiatives which have been tried - from the high-tech, large-scale waste management systems of consumerist San Francisco, to the locally based, small-scale initiatives in the Philippines.

Ben Shaw said that although there are some inherent problems with 'zero waste' as a concept and as a policy objective, there are lessons to be learnt by critically considering the achievements of existing practice, wherever in the world that may be found.

For example, the UK should set a per capita residual waste target to drive both recycling and prevention, backed up by variable charging of householders.

Britain should also be among the first countries to tackle consumption by making innovative and transformative producer responsibility agreements.

Other suggested plans were being much more ambitious in our recycling targets, which would include trying harder  on construction and demolition waste.

A 'closed loop' systems for organic wastes should also be tried, for instance by returning composted food waste to the land as fertiliser, rather than losing this valuable resource.

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