Business Waste Recycling – The next great idea?
Recycling from businesses is being heralded as the next big idea for Local Authorities. Widening the recycling focus from households to encompass the wider municipal waste stream seems like a great idea – but is it?
Like most things it all depends on how it is implemented. If Local Authorities subsidise collections or mix relatively clean business waste with lower grade or co-mingled household recycling, this new policy initiative will actually take us backwards.
Businesses are already recycling large quantities of waste with hundreds of private sector and community based recycling organisations around the country. They pay for this service, like they do for any of their other expenses. Subsidised or marginally costed Local Authority collections will simply result in businesses changing from their existing recycling providers. Recycling will not increase at a national level and the existing private sector recycling industry will be badly damaged by this unfair public sector competition, funded by Council Tax payers.
Collecting business recycling using the same vehicles used for households seems like a great idea. But take paper. Offices will produce predominantly white paper that can easily be turned back into high grade copier paper. Shops will produce lots of clean cardboard. Mix all this with either household paper, which is principally newspapers, or even worse with a co-mingled stream and much of the environmental value of the paper and cardboard will be lost.
In my own experience in the paper recycling industry over the past 15 years I have seen numerous publicly funded recycling schemes come and go. Offering in many cases free collections they have undermined existing private sector firms and upset businesses’ price expectations of what they need to pay to receive a recycling service.
Central and Local Government are best placed to stimulate demand for business recycling, encouraging businesses to recycle as part of their normal life. Government should leave the private sector to meet that demand. It may be with the best intentions, but business waste recycling by local authorities is not a good idea.