J&B News & Updates

16.07.19

The past few weeks has seen the return of the annual awareness campaigns World Environment Day and World Oceans Day.

The days aim to highlight the impact we are having on our natural resources through the mistreatment of waste.

Plastics in our oceans is especially becoming an increasingly big problem with around 26 million tonnes of plastic finding its way into the ocean every year with plastics from food waste being the most commonly found.

In light of this, a petition urging the government to ban all non-recyclable food packaging, which was signed by over 250,000 people, was debated in parliament in June.

The petition stated that the Earth is at a crisis point due to plastic consumption, and as a result, people in the UK are more willing than ever to engage in recycling.

Robert Goodwill, minister for agriculture, fisheries and food, said: "The government shares the public's concerns and has set out ambitious plans to tackle the problem."

However, a recent report by Which? stated that nearly half (48%) of supermarket plastic packaging was unable to be recycled. Meaning most of this unrecyclable type of packaging would unfortunately be disposed of in Energy from Waste facilities, or in some areas in landfills.

The report also saw that 42 per cent of the total supermarket packaging was labelled either incorrectly or not at all, making it difficult for well-intentioned consumers to know what to do.

This is a shocking fact that shows that more needs to be done to guarantee that packaging in the UK can be easily recycled and the infrastructure needs to be put in place by the UK government to ensure that.

J&B Recycling process over 200,000 tonnes of waste every year at our facilities in Hartlepool, South Tees (Middlesbrough) and Washington (Sunderland). If you would like to make an enquiry or if you require further information please contact us.