Recycling Doubts

For a long time now I have questioned, in my own mind, whether recycling can be cost effective. I was very interested therefore in a recent article that suggested incineration was probably a better way forward. Over the past few months I have read of several instances where recycled materials from Britain have ended up in landfill sites as far away as India and China. Now with the demise of the pound it is no longer viable to sent this material abroad. It has been estimated that 100,000 tonnes of recycled waste is being stored in warehouses on industrial estates. The waste paper market has collapsed and councils are now paying to store this waste to avoid incurring landfill taxes. In 2006 the government funded a study called Balances and Energy Impacts of the Management of UK Waste. As a result City engineers concluded that incinerating paper and other types of waste could provide the nation with one sixth of its electricity. A staggering thought. The net cost in energy terms of moving and recycling paper waste means we could cut carbon emissions by switching from recycling to incineration. It further concluded that a well run incinerator at high temperatures emits less dioxins than a typical bonfire. Obviously, this argument does not take into account preservation of the earths resources, saving trees for example, but it does make you question the overall merit of recycling paper waste.