Faced with the colossal scale of waste sent needlessly to landfill, or the plastic choking our oceans, it’s possibly too easy to say ‘what can I do? However careful I am with sorting my waste and recycling it’s going to make very little difference.’
The problem, of course, is that too many people think like that. It becomes the excuse to be careless about their waste. Which is partly why we are where we are.
The average UK household creates around 1 tonne of waste each year. That adds up to around 33 million tonnes for the whole of the UK. As of 2016 only 45% of that was recycled. Compare that with Germany and the Netherlands where over 60% of household waste is recycled.
If we could achieve those rates there would be 6 million tonnes less household waste going to landfill each year. Never mind the energy used and carbon emissions created by producing new materials to replace what could have been recycled.
We can all make a difference. We need to be a bit more careful and think twice before we dispose of something or be more aware of the packaging on things we buy.
Big Projects Needn’t Mean Big Waste
In addition to routine household waste there’s also the waste generated when we take on DIY projects or clear up the garage, garden or loft. Again, an awful lot of recyclable material ends up in landfill because it seems like too much effort to sort and recycle it.
But it needn’t be hard at all. If you hire a skip for those large projects from Wellington Waste, you really can throw more or less anything in and forget about it. Sorting and recycling is our job, and we’re pretty good at it. We will recycle 85% of the waste we collect. Some of the waste that can’t be recycled is incinerated and only a small percentage goes to landfill.
As somebody probably once said: you can’t change the world on your own, but you can change yourself. If we all took that approach, the world would be a cleaner and greener place, which would benefit us all.
