I have recently read in an article that even though us as United Kingdom citizens are committed to separating plastic bottles, cardboard boxes, and packaging this waste may not end up being recycled as we thought.
Many of us take great care to properly dispose of plastic, cardboard, and bottles in recycling bins, so how would we feel if we discovered that part of our recycling could end up in a landfill? Just horribly.
The institution which audited the government departments' performance has stated that more than half of the packaging reported as recycled in the UK is actually shipped abroad for processing.
The UK's recycling system actually gives the impression of being very good, but the article argued that these numbers could be misleading and that most of the increase in recycling is actually due to the UK simply exporting its waste problem and when this problem is exported we can't tell what's actually happening to it abroad.
First off, in order to solve this problem, the country must reduce the amount of waste it produces, make better use of resources and address the packaging waste issue.
The government's approach should be to encourage businesses to recycle first.
The government has started a campaign for citizens through targeted educational initiatives, including online specific apps and the initiative aims to guide consumers step by step in reducing household waste, mostly aimed at using food with the right awareness and changing daily habits.
When it comes to garbage disposal, most high-rise buildings in the UK have chutes.
Garbage chutes are used for trash in tall buildings and recycling is typically taken down to a recycling room on the first floor, near a service lift as the buildings with garbage chutes were generally built before recycling campaigns started.
Recycling material must be washed and cleaned as any food scraps may attract rats.
It seems like a strange concept to build garbage chutes these days when most people will take out their recycling and even compost but even modern buildings still have them.
In London, waste collection is done door to door, regularly but sparsely.
Street bins are virtually non existing except for the small ones for litter.
Rubbish trucks come weekly whereas they collect cardboard and plastic waste from a blue bin only once a month.
Similarly garden waste (which goes into a brown bin) and paper, glass, and metals which are collected in a green bin are collected only once a month or twice in the summer months.
The blue bin is for all non-recyclable materials or general waste.
The night before the collections, every terraced house owner must organize their own colorful wheelie bin by pulling it out of the garage or yard and leave it ready for pickup the next morning on the curb.
Up until ten years ago, the collections were set to a lively beat, twice as fast as today's, but then, you know, the pandemic, the crisis, Covid 19 changed it all perhaps.
It could work well but it is true that half the population doesn't follow any rules.
The only rule here, in most neighborhoods, is fly-tipping.
You open the door and throw out all the unwanted things: sofa, appliances, mattresses, shoes, clothes.
All ends up in the rain, in the wind and it all flies into the streets becoming a frenzy of garbage.
Many people don't even separate organic waste and they throw it all in the general waste bin which smells like crazy in the summer months.

And, the icing on the cake: I've personally seen workers take both sorted and unsorted waste and throw it in the truck together.