Jump and Crunch Your Recycling

Reported today in a number of broadsheets here in the U.K., household rubbish recycling has slowed down. This has resulted in piles, if not mountains, of waste ready for recycling lying around in local council centres, air force bases and other abandoned buildings across the country. Why, you ask? Well, the economic downturn and falling prices have slowed down the rate at which these items are being recycled and therefore the queue of items waiting for recycling is growing.

As reported around the press, most of the U.K.'s recycling is transported to China for processing, but recently China has cut its manufacturing output. With the economic downturn, prices for recovered items have fallen quite rapidly and this fall in prices has taken the recycling industry and local authorities by surprise. This issue is compounded because recycling rates are at record levels. This has left thousands of tonnes of newspapers, bottles and cans that no one will buy, forcing councils and collection companies to store everything with very few options remaining.

Local authorities are now calling on the government to allow them to look at new storage options including sealing recycling in warehouses, former military bases and airfields. "It's rapidly becoming a very serious problem," Steve Eminton of letsrecycle.com said.

With supply of recycled goods climbing and demand for recovering and selling recycled items falling, surely we need to think less about recycling, but more about using less packaging and even returning to the good old days of reusing containers. Whilst in some areas milk bottles are still delivered by milkmen across the country, most people now get their milk in tetra packs. Bring back the bottle! This would allow them to be reused over and over again with zero waste (save for sterilizing the bottles before reuse).

This is all on the back of the good news that 90 percent of local authorities are meeting or exceeding their household recycling targets, and that once the storage issue has been resolved and prices climb again, the excess will be used up. Until then, try to reuse at home as much as possible over the upcoming holiday season. Some tips I have for home recycling include:

• Scrunch up wrapping of the bread you buy. Most sliced bread comes in waxed paper that becomes the perfect fire lighter. This works for cardboard and drink cartons also.
• Reuse old newspapers. If you rip them up and soak them in water, you can make great paper mache paper bricks (my Father has done this for years) or get one of these funky paper rollers.
• Jump and crunch. Before throwing away cans and plastic, jump in the air and crunch the cans and bottles underfoot to help make them take as little space as possible in the recycling bin.

What tips do you have to reduce recycling space?