Recycling becomes more difficult as winter arrives, resulting in a 40% increase in contaminated waste
More than 5,000 tonnes of waste has been sent to landfill or incinerated as the UK’s wet winter makes recycling more difficult and damages many recycling plants.
Plastic bottles have been heavily criticized for polluting the oceans, leaking chemicals into drinks, and being a source of microplastics in the human body. They also pose a problem for recycling.
When plastic bottles mix with wet cardboard from heavy rains during a British winter, the wet cardboard gets wrapped around plastic bottles and plastic trays, causing significant damage to recycling plants.
New figures show plastic contamination in paper and cardboard rose by 40% between November and March, sending 5,000 tonnes more plastic waste to landfill and incinerators in the UK. The government is expected to signal in the coming weeks whether it will continue its Conservative policy of requiring councils to collect recyclables on a “bundled” basis, or whether it will insist that paper, plastic, glass, metal, food and garden waste should be separated at source.
The contamination data was obtained by DS Smith, which recycles around a fifth of all paper and cardboard in the UK at its Kemsley paper mill in Kent. “We have collected a lot of data over the last few years and we can see the seasonal effects of this, with contamination levels increasing during the wet winter months,” said Jonathan Scott, DS Smith’s technical operations director.
This has led to a slump in recycling in the UK, with official figures released in September showing household recycling rates fell from 44.6% in 2022 to 44.1% last year.
In the other three countries of the UK, household recycling rates have increased. Overall, the UK generated 191.2 million tonnes of waste in 2020, mainly from construction and demolition, down from 222.2 million tonnes in 2018.
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