Most domestic plastic consumers in the UK recycle less than half their plastic waste, and it makes up approximately 11% of their rubbish bin's weight. At our current rate of plastic disposal, for every 1,000,000 tonnes of plastic produced in the UK, approximately 85% of it will end up in a landfill.
Recycling rates in the UK have come a long way in recent years and continue to grow year on year. For example, in the year 2000 only 13,000 tonnes of plastic bottles were recycled [1]; the UK now recycles nearly 380,000 tonnes of plastic bottles a year [2].
The same piece of plastic can only be recycled about 2-3 times before its quality decreases to the point where it can no longer be used.
While overall the amount of recycled plastics is relatively small—three million tons for a 8.7 percent recycling rate in 2018—the recycling of some specific types of plastic containers is more significant.
plastic facts
This is the stuff we see being dumped and burned in south-east Asia.” The UK shipped 7,133 metric tonnes of waste to non-OECD countries, including Malaysia, Pakistan, Vietnam, Indonesia and Turkey in September 2020 alone, according to HMRC data analysed by the organisation the Last Beach Clean Up.
There is an EU target for the UK to recycle at least 50% of household waste by 2020. The recycling rate for WfH decreased in all UK countries except Northern Ireland in 2018. The recycling rate for England was 44.7%, compared with 47.7% in Northern Ireland, 42.8% in Scotland, and 54.1% in Wales.
The difference in the recyclability of plastic types can be down to how they are made; thermoset plastics contain polymers that form irreversible chemical bonds and cannot be recycled, whereas thermoplastics can be re-melted and re-molded.
Believe it or not, most plastics can only be recycled once or twice before they are downcycled. This means they are recycled into something of a lesser value. Most of the time, plastic is downcycled into a fabric because it is no longer recyclable after one use.
Plastic resin has limited value as a commodity because its quality degrades every time it is reheated. Consequently, most plastic is only reprocessed once before it goes to a landfill. “Downcycling” is a more accurate term than “recycling” when it comes to plastic. ... None of these products are in turn recyclable.
You can't manage what you don't measure
Of the 8.3 billion metric tons that has been produced, 6.3 billion metric tons has become plastic waste. Of that, only nine percent has been recycled. The vast majority—79 percent—is accumulating in landfills or sloughing off in the natural environment as litter.
The first scenario is of the most common ones: The plastic garbage ends up in a landfill, where its interaction with rain creates a harmful stew, called 'leachate'. This mass ends up in ground and streams, harming ecosystems. This bottle will need about 1,000 years to decompose.
How many marine animals die each year from pollution and plastic? 100 million marine animals die each year from plastic waste alone. 100,000 marine animals die from getting entangled in plastic yearly – this is just the creatures we find!
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