Where does all the recycling go on holiday?

I’ve made a big deal in previous posts about a lot of plastic waste going off to China, which doesn’t seem like the most sustainable means to recycle our plastic cast-offs. But how much gets recycled in the UK and how much gets shipped off to China, and is China the only place it goes? Warning! This post has lots and lots of pretty charts and maps – spent too much time with spreadsheets and QGIS…

How much recycling heads of on holiday aboard?

The Environment Agency uses a National Packaging Waste Database, where accredited waste re-processors and exporters submit quarterly information on what they are processing and exporting. There some good stats on how much recycling is carried out in the UK and how much is registered as being exported for recycling. I’ve been able to compile the 2017 data published this month on total packaging waste and recycling to breakdown how much of this is exported.

The good news is that glass is a clear winner, with over half of UK waste glass being recycled in the UK, closely followed by metal, while 30% of plastic is are is shipped off to other countries to be handled, though it is left behind by the staggering 52% of paper and carboard that was exported for recycling abroad. So which countries are taking all the recycling for us?

And where does it like to holiday?

I made a freedom of information request to the EA a few weeks ago about where recycling was exported to during 2018, and got a bumper load of data this week. And the results were really surprising! For a start, I didn’t know that so much of our paper waste is exported to China. Over 70% of the total paper export heads off to China, totalling a staggering 1,705,722 tonnes over the whole of 2018. And there I was thinking it would reflect what happens to glass recycling, which is pretty much sticking around in Europe, with Portugal being the top destination. Metals also tend to be recycled in Europe, though some of the waste is picked up by Africa (Morocco and Egypt), North America and Asia (Pakistan being a surprise big receiver of steel waste).

Plastic, on the other hand, isn’t all just heading China. I’ve set up the following map that shows where plastic headed over 2018.

Around 40% of UK plastic export was recycled in Europe, with Poland, Turkey and the Netherlands being popular destinations. The remaining 40% headed to Asia, with the biggest receivers being Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam. China’s recycling of our plastic was actually tiny in 2018 (3,832 tonnes). One of the reasons for this may be that China has in the last few years cut down on the recycling imports they receive, based on environmental grounds. The National Geographic have a good article on this, and the impacts are probably being seen in more waste going to other countries.

What to do with this new-found knowledge?

All of this relates only to packaging waste and not all the other waste streams that include plastic, but packaging is the bulk of waste that goes into our household bins each week. Plastic waste that ends up on beaches and oceans is typically plastic packing (bottles, bottle caps, food wrappers, bags etc.) – actually, come to think about it it’s also random flip flops. I was once in Hong Kong after a typhoon, and local beaches were strewn with plastic bottles and flip flops. Lots of flip flops.

We may try and reassure ourselves that what is being exported from the UK is being recycled, but it’s not guaranteed – some of it could be going to overseas landfill, and some of it may still accidentally end up in the oceans.

All this information helps me make wiser choices when I’m seeking an alternative to plastic packaging. So far, I’ve got the following hierarchy up and running in my mind now:

Paper/cardboard is the one that surprised me the most – it’s certainly an alternative that biodegrades, but it’s travelling a significant distance to be recycled. The other thing to consider is that, like plastic, there is a limit to the number of times it can be recycled. Wood fibres need to be long enough to bond together – recycling shortens these, and going through this process enough times means they get too short. This means more trees need to be chopped to supply paper/cardboard. You don’t get this with metal and glass as the materials in circulation can be continually reused.

So still redacting plastic, but trying to be mindful of the replacements!