Should we burn or bury waste plastic?

Since China refused last month to accept any more foreign waste for recycling, the UK is facing a challenge. How can it recycle more of its own waste? And should it bury or burn the low-grade waste that it can't recycle? We're trying to answer the second question. And it certainly divides opinions. So what are the facts about plastic waste? Well, according to the HMRC's UK trade info website, about 800,000 tonnes of plastic waste was exported from the UK for recycling to nations like China in 2014. News reports suggest much of this was contaminated by other rubbish, and had to be burned. The UK itself was left with 1,244,774 tonnes of packaging sent either to landfill or incineration in 2016. The National Packaging Waste Database estimates that 1,015,226 tonnes of plastics packaging was recycled in 2016. Remember, this is packaging, not all plastic waste. So should we burn our hard-to-recycle waste, or bury it?

Read more: http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-43120041

Posted by admin on Mar 5 2018. Filed under News Worldwide, No Plastic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry