Is the UK Meeting its Recycling Targets Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Is the UK Meeting its Recycling Targets - Essay Example This paper studies the current state of recycling in the United Kingdom with a special emphasis into plastic, glass and paper & board materials. It compares the government initiatives and accomplishments to other European nations. It provides a critical analysis of the effect of the EU Directive in reducing landfill contamination. Recycling glass has a beneficial impact in a country’s environment. Susan Hubbard says that every ton of cullet return to the market saves between 1.2 to 2.8 million British thermal units compared with the use of land filling and incineration (Toto, 2005). The process most commonly used to recycle glass is to remelt the material, a procedure which saves energy, reduces carbon dioxide emissions and reduce the consumption of the natural resource (Wrap, 2007). Appendix A illustrates the United Kingdom’s glass recycling rate. The country recycled 6% of the glass in 1984, but nearly 20 years later the recycling rate of the material had increased to 35% in the UK. The EU packaging waste directive set a 60% glass recycling target for the year 2006 (Glass, 2002). According to Glass Magazine countries such as Germany and Netherlands surpassed the 70% glass recycling rate before 2002, but other European nations such as the United Kingdom were struggling recycling glass a very lo w recycling rate of 23%. The UK is not very competitive in comparison with its European neighbors in glass recycling. One of the reasons the United Kingdom is struggling to recycle at the pace of other European nations is because the country does not have an effective glass recovery program in place to separate crystal and colour glass. There are different markets in the recycling industry for the two types of glass. If the UK establishes an efficient system to separate the products in their pickup efforts they could accelerate the process of