Waste in Birmingham
We're drowning in rubbish! I mean, not just the everyday metaphorical garbage
of Holly Oaks, New Labour, celebrity marriages or Andrex adverts, but a tide
of literal waste that, in the search for bizarre 'added value' - of the sort that
wraps individual bananas in plastic - means the UK produces 440 million tonnes
(and rising) of waste per year. On the one hand, modern society generates enormous
amounts of waste in its processes - the industrial sector producing 69 million
tonnes, construction and demolition another 70 million, and so on - and on the
other, what waste is produced is usually -well - wasted; 70% goes in landfill
sites (with considerable environmental risks, particularly to groundwater), and
another 20% into incinerators, producing hazardous smoke and residue. Less than
10% is recycled.
This is a deep structural problem, based on twin principles of out of sight,
out of mind and limitless resources. Neither of these are sustainable or environmentally
justifiable. Gradually, this is coming home to governments across the world.
In Europe, there's been a stream of EU directives regarding waste; organic landfill
waste reduced to 35% by 2020; at least 50 % by weight of packaging waste to be
recovered and least half of that to be recycled. Other countries have taken decisive
steps in waste reduction; in Germany, for example, a scheme forcing industry
to take back and re-use or recycle packaging has cut waste by a million tonnes.
Clearly, waste reduction requires national, political will.
However, in part, the solution begins at home: consume less, reuse more, avoid
excess packaging. However, even the most rigorously puritanical environmental
householder will produce some waste. Much of this is recyclable or reusable:
plastic (1.7m tonnes on food & drink and packaging alone!), paper, aluminium,
textiles and glass can all be reused economically and without the need for fresh
raw materials. The difficulty is that in Birmingham we don't have the municipal
support for household recycling; over the next few months, Birmingham Friends
of the Earth will be campaigning to get a full doorstep recycling scheme going
in Birmingham.
Other cities, in the UK & abroad, already have weekly collection schemes in place,
often coupled with home composting schemes for organic waste. Bath, for example
recycles 25% of household waste compared to Birmingham's measly 7%. Currently,
Birmingham Council actually picks up more street litter than it recycles - 34,
201 tonnes street litter, versus 34, 016 tonnes of recycled waste; our nearest
plastic recycling facility is Stratford-upon-Avon. We want a kerbside recycling
scheme; a fuller, properly implemented version of the paper collection scheme
already operating in parts of Birmingham. To be successful, and to get householder
support, it needs to be weekly, and minimal hassle: a box for inorganic waste,
to be sorted on the kerbside, and either another box for organic waste or home
composting schemes.
Jeremy Beacock
Birmingham was criticised in a recent audit commision report for not offering plastics recycling and having a "strategy driven by weight rather than sustainable development".
Take Action!
Write to your councillor, tell them you want a clean doorstep recycling collection
with the material sorted on the doorstep, not another incinerator and not a dirty
mixed recycling plant. Ask them for details of the council's contract with Tyseley
and how they are going to meet the targets? Ask them to look at our website http://www.beep.dial.pipex.com/campaigns/waste
for information on how recycling can be funded and what other councils are doing.
Contact Karen or Andy Pryke at the Warehouse about specific events - we will be running a waste action day on and after April 6th.