AS MOUNTAINS of rubbish are emptied by the lorryload into a shed at one of the dozens of landfill sites across Scotland, the aim of recycling almost three-quarters of all we throw away seems a long way off.
To some, it is impossible to imagine meeting the target of recycling 70 per cent of all waste in Scotland by 2025. To others, it is a challenge that is achievable with innovation and a change in habits.
Some 3.4 million tonnes of municipal waste a
re produced in Scotland each year. Every day, 500 tonnes of waste is sent from Edinburgh alone, and dumped in the Oxwellmains landfill site near Dunbar, operated by Viridor.
Among the rubbish inside the bin bags spewed from the back of lorries there are large quantities of paper, tin cans and plastic, suggesting there are still many people who are not recycling.
The average recycling rate in Scotland is 32.2 per cent. However, in some areas, it is far lower. In the past year, Glasgow recycled only 18.4 per cent of its rubbish, far from the 70 per cent target, and just 0.2 points higher than the year before. By contrast, some European countries, including the Netherlands and Austria, already recycle about 60 per cent.
However, even if everyone in Scotland stepped up their recycling, a huge challenge would remain: what to do with it all.
The recession has brought this into focus, as the market for recycled materials has shown worrying signs of starting to dry up, meaning there is nowhere to send rubbish after it is put in the recycling bin. There are even rumours of large quantities of UK rubbish sitting in storage – a situation experts insist has not yet arisen in Scotland.
Colin Murchison, a researcher at Glasgow Caledonian University, who heads a programme called Remade that aims to create a bigger market for recycled materials, thinks that, despite the challenges, the 70 per cent target is achievable.
He says: "2025 is still a way away, but there's no question that it's a challenge for us, because it requires a change in the way we as a society treat our materials."
He thinks key to meeting the targets will be to establish more of a market for recycled goods. This could be done, in part, by setting targets to force producers of goods to use a certain percentage of recycled materials – an idea the Scottish Government consulted on last year.
Mr Murchison also thinks a market can be established for food waste, which forms nearly 20 per cent of the rubbish we throw away. Already trials are being carried out by seven local authorities in Scotland into kerbside collections of food waste.
The food could be used in anaerobic digestion plants that convert the food into methane, which is then burned to produce electricity that can be sold to the national grid.
Mr Murchison argues that establishing plants in Scotland to process recycled materials could create jobs and boost the economy. However, before that can be done, a constant supply of raw materials will be needed, which means more people need to recycle.
"We need to increase the flow of recycled materials," he says. "We need a constant flow. At the moment, it's more of a trickle."
Shipping waste overseas to be dealt with has attracted a lot of negative publicity. However, Mr Murchison thinks it is good to have those markets available as Scotland builds up its recycling rates to levels where it can set up manufacturing plants at home. And even though transporting the waste produces damaging greenhouse gas emissions, he thinks it is still beneficial to the environment to ship them overseas to be recycled, when the carbon footprint of creating a new product instead is taken into consideration.
"By the time you have extracted the raw materials, processed them, transported them, fabricated the product and delivered it to customers, then there's a huge carbon footprint associated with it," he says.
Currently, about 50 per cent of the recycling material produced in Scotland is dealt with here, and the other half is either sent to England or abroad, particularly to China.
None of the newspapers thrown away in Scotland are turned back into paper in this country, but are instead sent mostly sent to England. The majority of plastic is sent to Asia, although some is turned into bottles and fleeces in England. However, most of the glass, electronics, aggregates and components are processed within Scotland.
Last week, Richard Lochhead, the environment secretary, announced £5 million of funding to help create the infrastructure to process recycled plastic in Scotland.
He said: "With most of the plastic collected for recycling in Scotland taken to England or even further afield, I want to see an improved infrastructure for plastic in Scotland and hope that the new scheme will kick off significant investment in this area. And by getting reprocessing operations up and running within Scotland, we will reduce the amount of carbon emitted by shipping plastic overseas.
"Getting these operations up and running will not just be a boost to the environment. There are considerable economic benefits including job creation to be taken advantage of – particularly welcome in these difficult economic times."
The UK has gained a reputation as the dirty man of Europe for the amount of waste sent to landfill, perhaps due to the wide availability of sites such as disused quarries. It is a cheap and easy way of disposing of rubbish, and the Viridor plant near Edinburgh shows how slick an operation it has become.
Birds of prey are used to keep away seagulls, and the rubbish is entirely contained within plastic – as though wrapped in a huge plastic bag – to stop any nasty by-products seeping into the environment.
The methane gas produced from the rotting waste is collected and burned to produce electricity, which is sold to an adjacent cement works.
Clive Barber, area manager of Viridor Waste Management, which operates the landfill site in East Lothian, believes it will be almost impossible to achieve the 70 per cent recycling target by 2025. He thinks it will be extremely difficult to replace landfill with another equally convenient and efficient method of disposing of the mountains of rubbish created in Scotland each day.
"Whatever we replace landfill with has to be there 365 days of the year and it has to work," he says. "Landfill is the cheapest option. If the alternative costs £50 more a tonne, the local authorities won't go for it."
He is also clear that, without a change of attitude from the public, there will be no hope of meeting the targets. One of the best ways to cut down on waste would, he thinks, be too produce less in the first place, by cutting through the "cycle of consumerism".
He says: "How on earth did we get to this point where we have got to have our pork chops or our pears wrapped up in layers or packaging?"
Campaign will target the £9m worth of food Scots bin yearlySCOTTISH families throw away an average of more than £400 worth of food each year, it was revealed today.
The average household wastes £410 worth of food every year – a figure environment secretary Richard Lochhead described as "staggering". But a new campaign is being launched to help people make better use of their food.
Almost £9 million worth of food is thrown out every year in Scotland.
And 57 per cent of all food waste could have been used if it had been better managed and sorted – with 8 per cent of discarded food not even out of date, while 23 per cent is still in its packaging or intact.
The latest phase of the Scottish Government's Go Greener campaign will highlight that if everyone in Scotland stopped wasting food, the environmental impact would be the equivalent to taking one in four cars off the roads.
The initiative will use online, radio and outdoor advertising to get its message across.
Mr Lochhead said: "Recent years have seen a growing awareness of the need to change our ways, including recycling more, being more energy-efficient and leaving the car at home."
And he said the campaign was a "fresh drive to raise awareness of the benefits, both to the planet and to people's pockets, of ensuring food isn't thrown away".
