What happens to our rubbish?

Posted by Belle on June 12th, 2019

Each year we manage to produce 400 million tones of rubbish in the United Kingdom. The majority of this is waste products from quarrying, mining and other construction based work, however 7% of this still comes from household rubbish. Although this fraction seems small,it is still 30 million tons of waste. All of our leftovers, packaging and unwanted items are thrown out of the houses into the bins, but what actually happens to all of our rubbish?

Rubbish is collected with all the different materials mixed together, sometimes called ‘commingled’ when referring to mixed recyclable items. These are collected and compressed as it is more efficient for the councils to do so. After it has been collected is when the different materials are separated via conveyor belts in addition to the use of various magnets and other technology which can recognise particular items. At the final stage of the separation process, workers scan and identify items themselves, removing anything which has falsely passed through.

Despite the pushed focus for recycling in our country, at least 1% of the UK’s rubbish is transported abroad to countries in Asia for it to be recycled into something else or it can be discarded properly. Nowadays, we are outputting so much rubbish that some of these countries are receiving more than they can handle, or it is of such low quality they cannot recycle it. Some of this excess waste is then sent to illegal landfill plants or is burnt by illegal companies which damages the environment.

The majority of rubbish, if it is not recycled into something else or sent away, is used to generate energy in the forms of heat and electricity. This means non-reusable natural power sources such as coal, oil and gas are less used to produce energy instead.

The other option is to send items to landfill. This is usually limited to items which are really big so would be difficult to recycle or send to the energy waste facilities, or dangerous materials such as asbestos as this is very harmful to use. Sometimes landfill rubbish can be blown away by the wind and make its way into the ocean, putting wildlife at risk, so it is important that all waste is disposed of properly.