The '2020' group of Conservatives has published a report examining resource efficiency issues and looking at ways waste policy might be amended to improve the quality of recyclates which might then be used as manufacturing inputs.
Most of the report is fairly underwhelming but there is an interesting proposal that Local Authorities should be allowed to offer residents council tax rebates to reward them for reducing contamination in the recyclate they put out.
This policy would be well targeted, as the best way to improve quality of material along the supply chain is to reduce the contaminants/non-target materials entering the recyclate stream in the first place. Unfortunately I am not convinced that this policy would work in practice, not least due to the inherent low value of recyclates collected from households.
There are around 23 million households in England, which put out around 10.5 million tonnes of material for recycling and composting. These materials could probably generate revenues in the region of £700m at current prices, which equates to around £30/household. Not much scope for cutting bills which are £100 per month on average in England. I doubt a 2.5% cut would have much of an influence on behaviour at all.
Tuesday 4 February 2014
Thursday 16 January 2014
Chinese green fence lauded as great success: 0.1% of shipments rejected
Via Letsrecycle I see that the Chinese green fence policy has been doing a great job at keeping out all of those terrible low quality contaminated shipments of recyclate.
The article states that 3,508 tonnes of material imported into Hangzou province was seized for being overly contaminated. Out of a total of 6.54 million tonnes. That is 0.05% of total shipments: a vanishingly small amount.
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