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Talking Rubbish column: 24th January
There was an interesting response from some people to the news about how much waste had been recycled over Christmas.
The amount of material going though the recycling centres and kerbside black boxes was up a third on last year. People are really making sure they are recycling as much as possible.
But some people are concerned the waste is simply shipped off to be someone else’s problem.
It’s an understandable concern especially with recent news reports highlighting cases where it’s done wrong.
The first thing to say is that we in Wiltshire don’t dump our waste on someone else’s doorstep for them to deal with. We take our responsibility very seriously.
The second is that the logistics and economics of dealing with dozens of different recyclable materials are fiendishly complicated.
The Wiltshire Waste Partnership has to balance the demands of residents and government targets with what is commercially available and what Wiltshire County Council can afford.
So for any particular item we’ve got to find someone who will take it and at a price that makes it economically viable for everyone.
If you could look down on Wiltshire from space and see the trails left by the thousands of different items as they get sent for re-processing you would see them radiating out of the county in all directions.
The glass heads up to Yorkshire and the paper and cardboard over to Kent. Television sets go to South Wales while scrap metal has a short trip to Trowbridge. Wood journeys to Wrexham. Low energy light bulbs and fluorescent tubes are taken to Hampshire.
One of our most energy-efficient linkups is with Devizes-based Refurbiz who ensure that things like fridges get re-used by families who need them.
These destinations are not the end of the story. They are often just the sites where an item is reduced to a raw material which can then be sold on to someone else. For instance the glass that goes to Yorkshire is crushed down into cullet and some of it is then shipped over to specialist manufacturers in France where they turn it back into wine bottles, for instance.
We’ll be publishing the results of an in-depth study on this in the near future but you can already find out quite a bit about the journey your waste makes at our web site www.recycleforwiltshire.com
ENDS
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