What we do with our household rubbish has become a big political issue, all the way from its role in our becoming a ‘zero-waste society’ [Ref: GoZero] to the furore over plans for fortnightly rubbish collections [Ref: BBC News]. While the government’s publication of a Waste Strategy for England [Ref: BBC News] may not exactly set the pulse racing, plans for £30 a year rubbish charges and cash rewards for recycling are part of a wider debate about the place of the environment among our social priorities. The themes are familiar: landfill is out, discouraged by a landfill tax, and recycling is in. Of course recycling has been encouraged for years, and it might seem like a self-evidently good thing. Who could argue with turning old products into new ones rather than burying them in the ground? But with waste meant for recycling ending up in landfill [Ref: Telegraph], and being sent to China [Ref: Guardian], the reality may not live up to expectations. Recycling may make us feel good about ‘doing our bit’, but is it economically efficient? Swedish waste experts questioned conventional wisdom by arguing that separating rubbish is a waste of time and money and that incineration of household waste is better for the economy and the environment. Environmentalists say that this, along with the other worries [Ref: Recycle Now], is an anti-green myth [Ref: Friends of the Earth]. However, it has been argued that our concern with recycling is out of all proportion with its benefits and that our priorities have become skewed. Some councils have made recycling compulsory [Ref: Guardian], and even where it’s voluntary you could still get a fine for putting paper in a bag of bottles and cans [Ref: Guardian]. Then there are glitzy government-backed campaigns (dead link) with ‘celebrity ambassadors’, and projects in schools. Is recycling an essential part of raising environmental awareness, or would our time be better spent on other social questions?

A load of rubbish?
Every year around 30 million tonnes of waste is collected from households in the UK. Once this would just have been seen as something for councils to sort out, but today we’re more likely to think about waste in terms of our personal impact. This figure means that each person in the country is generating 500 kg of rubbish, or seven times their body weight. In terms of total waste output, the UK produces enough rubbish to fill the Albert Hall every hour. Although household rubbish is less than 10 per cent of all waste produced, it is argued that recycling more of this waste would make a big difference. Britain’s recycling rate is increasing, and has nearly doubled in the past three years. But at 27 per cent, it is still low compared withover 60 per cent in some other European countries. Landfill is still the main means of managing most of the UK’s waste.

Wasted economic opportunities or a waste of money?
Some economists point out that after collection, transport and sorting, the cost of kerbside recycling programmes generally exceeds the revenues generated by recycled products, and is also greater than the disposal costs [Ref: Weekly Standard]. They say recyling is inefficient and see market prices rather than government initiatives as the best way of setting priorities. For campaigners this is one more recycling myth. They argue that economic calculations don’t take full account of benefits like reduced greenhouse gas emissions. A strong free market case (dead link) has been made for recycling and for the use of financial incentives. Rather than being a service paid for by council tax, rubbish collection would become subject to a ‘pay as you throw’ charge.

Waste not, want not?
Some sceptics think that with our preoccupation with recycling it’s almost as though we’re trying to fill a place once occupied by religion and community life [Ref: spiked]. The desire for convenient packaged goods is described as the ‘besetting sin’ [Ref: Guardian] of modern life. There is concern about people’s recycling ‘lapsing’  over Christmas [Ref: Telegraph], and those who speak out against compulsion risk being seen as social pariahs [Ref: Barnet & Potters Bar Times]. School children are taught that recycling is cool, with Recycler the rapping robot [Ref: Recycle Now] teaching the 3Rs of ‘reduce, reuse and recycle’. Should we question whether recycling should be a central way through which we think about our local communities and the wider world? Or when people wash nappies rather than using disposables, for example, is it not rather a sign of responsibility and a welcome return to the ‘waste not, want not’ thrift of previous generations?

Is it a question of economic efficiency or environmental ethics?
Until now, kerbside recycling has involved separating waste into up to five different bins, but new sorting technology makes ‘single stream’ collection possible [Ref: Wasteage].Is this a good use of technology, or does the process of separating rubbish play an important role in changing attitudes towards consumption and encouraging us to do more further up the waste hierarchy (dead link) to eliminate, reduce and re-use before we need to recycle? Some say environmentalists would be hypocritical to ignore the environmental and economic case for incineration with energy recovery [Ref: Integra]. But incinerators are opposed because they are seen as visual eyesores with dangerous emissions. And Friends of the Earth argue that incinerators ‘all too often fail to provide community benefits in terms of education and local involvement in solving the problem of what we do with our rubbish’ [Ref: Friends of the Earth].