A cafe in the station promotes its ‘compostable’ takeaway cups and the steep streets around the hotel are dotted with large communal recycling bins. A pink and green painted old milk float called Bianca, named after the former EastEnders character, glides from house to house, processing carefully sorted recycling bins on behalf of cooperative Magpie Recycling. A few streets over, below Brighton Open Market, volunteers at the Green Center hover over residents – and politely but firmly correct them where necessary – as they sort their hardest-to-recycle waste into buckets waiting to be collected by the Marigold gloves in Kinder and Babybel wrapping, coffee packaging and corks. “As a country, we’re addicted to recycling,” said Melanie Rees, who runs the Green Centre. “I started it 17 years ago and it hasn’t changed. The fascination, the addiction to recycling.” And yet, in 2020, the Brighton & Hove unitary authority sent only 29% of its household waste for reuse, recycling or composting (although the council says this has since risen to 30.5%). This places it in the bottom 40 of councils in England. While Brighton may have one of the worst recycling performers nationally, it’s also a prime example of a wider problem affecting large parts of England as well as Scotland and Northern Ireland: we’re rubbish at recycling – and getting worse. According to the latest Defra figures, published in May, the amount of household waste recycled in England actually fell by an unimpressive 1.5% in 2020 (and below the EU minimum target of 50%) 44 %. Poor recycling performance appears to be something of a national feature across the UK. Northern Ireland’s domestic recycling fell from 51% to 49%, while Scotland’s fell from 45% to 41%. Wales bucks this trend significantly. Its recycling rate was 56.5% (its municipal rate is 65%). In 2017, it was ranked third in the world (after Germany and Taiwan) by independent consultancy Eunomia. In the UK, only Wales is reversing the downward trend in recycling volumes and at 56.5% is one of the best in the world. Photo: Andrew Fox/Getty Images So why is so much of the UK so bad at recycling? Andy Rees, head of waste strategy for the Welsh Government, said devolution, funding and close communication with councils were key to their success – as was transparency. They have a website where people can track where their recycling goes. “We aspire to do good things, but we take advantage of the fact that we are relatively small and then we can all come together with the local authorities around the table and find the way forward,” he said. “So to be fair to Defra, we have had advantages in Wales that devolution has brought us and allowed us to do quite well.” The picture around England is much more different. The worst performing local authority for household reuse, recycling and composting last year was Barrow-in-Furness Borough Council with 18%, Defra figures show. The best was St Albans Borough and District Council, with 64%. So if Andy Rees were suddenly given the mandate to take over England too, what steps would he take? The food waste would be great, he said, and, crucially, it would be something that has angered almost everyone in the country at one time or another: the collection of the same materials at local authorities. Simon Ellin, chief executive of the Recycling Association, the trade association for UK recycling companies, said one of the biggest issues is inconsistency between councils, which can make logistics and communication with the public difficult. “There are 350 local authorities across the UK and each one has a slightly different collection system, some very different,” he said. “And then the material they collect from the public, it’s often very contaminated, it’s not target material because it’s so poorly designed. It’s not labeled properly, they haven’t been given proper instructions on how to put it in the bin.” This leaves recyclers with little choice but to clean it up as best they can and try to sell it. “It was a broken supply chain,” he said. Each local authority in the UK has its own recycling rules, which makes it difficult to communicate with the public. Photo: Basak Gurbuz Derman/Getty Images While the pandemic has likely played a role in England’s slipping recycling numbers, Elin admits progress has leveled off. “Let’s not forget that local government has done a real job of central government in terms of budgets and finances, and I really feel sorry for them,” he said. “All these demands and criticisms that the recycling performance was not good, and yet they were not given the money to do it properly.” But change may be on the way in the form of new government legislation under the Environment Bill, which Elin describes as “visionary and ground-breaking”, due to come into force in the coming years. Key to this is a plan by Defra to introduce consistent recycling collections in England, so that every council collects plastics, paper and cards, metals and food waste from homes and businesses. It also plans to launch a deposit return scheme for PET (polyethylene terephthalate) bottles in England, Northern Ireland and Wales (which will also include steel and aluminum cans and glass bottles). Big business will also be under pressure: brand owners, importers and distributors will be charged according to the amount and type of packaging they market and, from 2024, large cafes and fast food chains will have to they provide bins for collection and recycle their packaging. But campaigners, industry leaders and politicians are concerned that, amid the cost of living crisis and the current Tory turmoil, environmental issues are not a top priority. “I am really concerned that as the leadership debate within the Conservative Party drifts further to the right, the environment will be a big loser, with common sense values such as recycling and the net zero target sidelined,” the Greens said. party baroness Jenny Jones; He fears that without a moratorium on new incinerators, there will be “more greenhouse gases and less recycling”. He warned: “England could backtrack on the things that will help people the most.” With single-use plastic causing so many problems, some are looking for solutions that avoid it all together. Refill stores invite people to bring their own containers, but too many remain inaccessible or specialized. So far Loop, which offers customers durable packaging that they bring back to be cleaned, refilled and reused, appears to have gained the most traction, with household brands such as Persil, Tetley and BrewDog signed up. Tesco recently completed a pilot with Loop in online shopping and in 10 stores, where customers paid refundable deposits in reusable pre-filled packaging. This was “positively received” by customers, who bought more than 80,000 products over two years. The most popular products, he said, were brands like Coca-Cola and own-label staples like granola and olive oil. The pilot is currently on hold, but Tesco said it is looking at how to scale it up in the future. Asda’s sustainability store in Middleton, Leeds, was such a success that it has since opened replenishment stores in Glasgow, Milton Keynes and York. Photo: Matt Timbers At Asda’s flagship sustainability trial store in Middleton, Leeds, which opened in 2020, the supermarket is testing new methods on shoppers. It was such a success that it has since opened refill stores in Glasgow, Milton Keynes and York. From the outside, it looks like a normal Asda but, inside, customers can buy PG Tips, Vimto, Kellogg’s, Radox and Persil refills, browse a ‘pre-favourites’ clothing section and buy many unpackaged products. But for many shoppers convenience is still king. On an overcast Wednesday last week, shopper Roché Beel, 26, who avoids using carrier bags and is a fisherman, said she had yet to try the refill scheme: “It’s quite a hassle when you can buy a box full of the goods that you need .” Becky Shenton, 27, who works in NHS procurement and lives nearby, said she does recycle but it’s easy to feel cynical about it. “People now use bags for their whole lives just like they used to use the old carrier bags. People need to take personal responsibility.” Ten and Costina Nyakudarika, 24 and 21, came to the shop specifically to see the recycling facilities. Ten, a medical student, felt that Covid had turned many people away from their good recycling habits. “People weren’t going out as much and, after the lockdown ended, they weren’t willing to go back to their previous behaviours. They didn’t care that much.” Ten and Costina Nyakudarika at Asda recycling in Middleton. Photo: Miranda Bryant/The Observer Although he agreed that England is not particularly good at recycling, Julien Tremblin, managing director of TerraCycle Europe, which created the Loop, was at least confident. that it does not go backwards. “I really strongly believe that it is by no means on the decline. I think if, anything, it will go up,” he said. “You have to move to a place where reusing is as simple as using, so that it’s as easy for the consumer to do it as to buy a product and throw it away. Once we achieve this, we will have solved much of the waste crisis.” James Piper, a self-proclaimed “garbage picker” and author of The Rubbish Book: A Complete Guide to Recycling, said a system based on constant reuse would be a good solution. But he added: “There is nothing in our present…
