🤯 This slightly frightening photo depicts merely half a day's worth of recycling waste collected by my local district council! Astonishingly, in 2023, this amounts to approximately 195kg of recycling waste per person annually.
♻️ In 2003, the Household Waste Recycling Act came into effect, requiring local authorities in England to establish separate collections for at least two types of recyclable materials from every household by 2010. This directive placed significant pressure on local councils, necessitating the development of new downstream processes to efficiently manage, segregate, and repurpose the increasing volume of waste.
Despite the concerted efforts of residents, local authorities, and businesses to reduce waste, the reality remains that the council is collecting as much waste in 2023 as it did in 2015. Unfortunately, this trend is reflected in national UK waste statistics as well. https://lnkd.in/e-UEdRgE.
Huntingdon District Council, is managing the same volume of waste now as it did prior to the Paris Agreement (2016), the Single-Use Plastics Directive (2019), the Environment Act (2021) with its extended producer responsibility (EPR) for packaging, and the Plastic Packaging Tax (2022).
In hindsight, addressing the problem of excessive packaging back in 2003 could have been simpler and more cost-effective if we had simply prevented unnecessary packaging from entering the supply chain. So, the pressing question now is: where do we go from here? Should we invest in stricter enforcement, drive behaviour change, or advocate for stronger policies? Ultimately, reducing waste is less about what we collect and more about what we produce and consume.
I am a huge advocate for low tech, decentralised innovations. What are your ideas for a more sustainable future? Share your thoughts in the comments!
Thank you to Huntingdonshire District Council for sharing the photo and statistics. Auriane Cirasuolo Lara Davenport-Ray Ben Obese-Jecty
#recycling #sustainability #lowtech #decentralized #environment #climatechange
