Category: Suffolk County Council

Suffolk residents are playing their part when it comes to recycling plastics in Suffolk.

Suffolk is one of the highest performing counties in the country for recycling and composting, and it is clear that residents have got on board with the environmental importance of recycling.

Through a summer of public events, officers at Suffolk County Council have noted an increase in the number of people wanting to be reassured that their waste, and in particular plastic, really is being recycled.

The county council manages the 18 Household Waste Recycling Centres in the county and out of these, 12 accept plastics for recycling. All of this plastic is currently shipped to China for recycling. There is currently a gap in the amount of plastic collected for recycling in this country and available plants in the UK to recycle it, and so China currently bridges that gap, in fact China accounts for more than 80% of the UK's recovered plastics exports.

The county council has an audit trail to document what happens to your plastic materials when collected for recycling from a HWRC to the final stages of the recycling process in China. Suffolk complies with the requirements and so we are confident that the plastic sent to China is being recycled in the correct way.

A new report issued last week (19/08/08) by the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) suggests that there are carbon savings to be made from recycling, even when materials due to be recycled are sent abroad to far away shores like China. Taking into consideration the miles the materials travel, the carbon footprint is still less than using a landfill site in the UK.

Currently there is there is an imbalance of trade between China and the UK. It is not unusual for a container ship to head back to China empty. CO2 emissions are still produced whether or not they are carrying cargo so taking this fact in to account, the transport emissions produced from transporting plastics are even smaller - less than one-tenth of the overall amount of CO2 saved by recycling, so another advantage to exporting the waste

If you would like more information about your local HWRC see the "local services" tab of www.suffolkrecycling.org.uk