To think I shouldn't bother recycling?

[HarryHenderson]

Just putting my milk cartons in the recycling. Then thought "what is the point of me doing this?"

Did anyone watch panorama last night? Apologies if there is another thread, I couldn't find one.

Our country apparently sends most of our recycling to Malaysia. There are mountains of waste there, piled up, being burnt in the street, ending up in water courses.

What's the point in recycling plastics if this is what our government is doing?
Isn't it the lesser of two evils to just dump it in landfill where it will be buried and at least not ending up in the oceans?

Now I'm not an eco warrior by any stretch. But I liked to think I was trying to do my bit..

Where do you live OP? If you are in Hampshire it goes to be incinerated to generate electricity, which is some comfort.

Burning those plastics can't be good for anyone though, surely?

It’s much better to reduce than recycle if you can.

Can you switch to milk delivery in glass bottles? There’s a website called something like findmymilkman.org where you can put in your postcode and it tells you who delivers milk in your area.

There were some good ideas on the show for reducing waste, but it was shocking about the plastic. I was merrily putting everything in the recycling bin (and will continue to) under the impression it was going to be actually recycled.

It is quite hard to completely avoid plastic, a lot of it takes more time, effort and money to do, so its finding your own personal compromises.

Our last milk delivery company switched from glad to plastic a coup!e of years ago.
It is too cheap to use plastic (versus washing and reusing glass) as there is no responsibility for it's true disposal.

Aluminium cans were always valuable enough to be recycled. Steel and clear glass had a demand at one point.

Why does some cardboard get covered in a plastic film nowadays (I don't mean glossy kaolin coating) and does that interfere with recycling?

It’s much better to reduce than recycle if you can

This.

I don't want to keep my own cow or goat. Nor do I think the council would allow me to.

Our council sent tonnes of separated and sorted plastic to landfill. It’s not been thought through properly but we should probably still try.

Tokyo have built land from their rubbish.

At this point everything should be looked at for longer term solutions.

The current Sort, Collect, Dump programme would be laughable were it not so pathetic.

We're just reducing what we buy in plastic wherever possible.

Plastic where we live is incinerated and used to generate electricity too.

This is turning into a huge problem across Asia. Countries like Malaysia and China that were previously happy to take trash are sending it back.

The Philippines just sent tons of rubbish back to South Korea where there aren't enough facilities to recycle it and it just gets burnt.

Absolute madness. The only thing we can do is try to reduce the amount of packaging we use.

I try to buy fewer individual snacks and I avoid products which use unnecessary packaging. But it's a drop in the ocean, really.

Landfill tax and has not helped, just shoved the problem along to the less scrupulous.

Incineration is not perfect but they do clean the emissions as much as possible.

I've just got back from Florida where they don't recycle anything!! I did think if country this big isn't recycling what good is it us doing it? I'll still do it obviously, just shocking such a big country aren't doing it.

Our area is one of the few left in the UK that doesn't recycle council collected waste at all. Everything goes into a big grey wheelie bin that's collected every week. You can even dump big stuff beside the bin such as broken toys or an old clothes airer and the binmen actually take them. How very 90's!

I would love to go no plastic but really thinking about it the other day, I couldn't see how it would be feasible and it makes me feel so sad. Certain things just have to come in separate packets (you can't bulk buy toothpaste for example). How many things would go off quickly if it was doled out into non-sterile receptacles?

I do try to only buy unbagged fruit and veg where possible. I would also love an old style shop that had bins of dry goods you just scooped out yourself like we used to go to in the 80's. I'd love reusable glass bottles for fizzy pop again too, especially considering how much we go through in our house.

I agree that reducing is far more effective than recycling. Now if only we, the public, could encourage retailers to help us by providing such services.

I know you mean OP. It would be much better for the stuff to be in landfill rather than dumped in the sea.

And since my state (in Australia) was found to be trucking its "recycling" to landfill, I guess that's what is happening anyway.

I still do use the recycle bin but am no longer under any illusions that this is helping.

Sometimes I think the fact that recycling bins exist causes people to act worse than they otherwise would. People dump anything they like in the recycling*, thinking "Great! Nothing wasted, I can buy more now." If people couldn't kid themselves that stuff is getting recycled, they may be more likely to face up to the fact that reducing is the only sustainable option.

*Stupid things I have seen in my unit block's recycling this week - plastic kids toys, umbrella, bike tyre, clothes, big bag of prawn crackers

I'll still do it obviously, just shocking such a big country aren't doing it.

But the UK and other western countries aren't doing it either. Sure they are collecting recycling, but it never gets recycled - it ends up dumped at sea, in a trash heap in Asia, burned or in landfill. The only difference is that Florida isn't pretending.

Chester do your local scouts collect cans for the cash it can generate?!

I was absolutely gutted when I found this out. I still recycle though. My friend was extremely cross when I told her what happens to most 'recycling' to the point she was cross with me for telling her. Ignorance is bliss... I really need to cut down more on plastic.

I do recycle but I'm realising it's much more important to cut our single use plastic waste completely

@RosemaryRemember Tokyo have built land from their rubbish. But is that really possible? It sounds a great idea, but if so, surely we'd all be doing it? I mean, we could build a causeway from Scotland to the Shetlands, that would use up a load! or extend the lower bit of the Isle of Wight that's currently collapsing? Or fill in the gap between Essex and Canvey Island, lots of demand for land in reach of London?

@ChesterDrawsDoesntExist
I do try to only buy unbagged fruit and veg where possible. I would also love an old style shop that had bins of dry goods you just scooped out yourself like we used to go to in the 80's. I'd love reusable glass bottles for fizzy pop again too, especially considering how much we go through in our house.

Waitrose is starting to bring this back and morrisons will let you take your own containers for meat & fish from the counters. Hipster shops are doing bring & weigh too, there is one near me, they also let you take milk bottles back there and they re-use them.

I know how you feel OP. Ive been diligently washing out all my recycling but after I heard this, it is hard to see the point. Obviously I still do it but am trying to think of ways to just cut out plastic completely.

It is difficult and more expensive. For example, we get though about 8 pints of milk a week. That's around £2.20 if I buy 2 x 4 pint plastic bottles from the supermarket. If I order from the milkman its 81p a pint, so £6.48! A massive difference when you're on a tight budget.

I work for a globally-recognised brand and our office doesn't recycle. It upsets me greatly.

We have bins in our kitchen where you'll lift the lid to see plastic, card and food waste all thrown in together.

I've emailed our office manager about it several times to no avail.

I have resorted to keeping a big cardbox box in my own office, which I fill with all my recycling and haul out to empty in the big recycling bins in the car park every time the box gets full.

I wish the government imposed fines. It's dispicable!

What's worse, is we make big claims on our website about planting trees and making products with waste material - all true, but what's the point in that if we dont even bother to recycle.

It's really disheartening isn't it?

I felt so sorry for that Malaysian man, he was practically begging us to stop ruining his country!
Surely as a 'rich', developed nation we can think of a better way to dispose of this waste rather than dumping it on a developing country that has no means to do anything with it.

I don't understand why plastics haven't been phased out more.

I can kind of understand it for preserving meat... but it does the opposite for fruit and veg, carrots and bananas and such hate sweating away in plastic bags!

I'm actually surprised how much that programme got under my skin tbh.