Environment

The Campaign for Real Recycling (CRR) has pressed the government for more kerbside-sorted collections for packaging waste, after it revealed 7% of materials sent to recovery facilities (MRF) were rejected.

Waste minister Joan Ruddock said last Friday (25 April) that 1.3m tonnes of household waste in England was sent to MRFs in 2006-7. However, 89,000 tonnes was rejected for disposal, and a further 32,000 turned away from recycling processors.

CRR said that householders would be "frustrated and disappointed" because they had made the effort to recycle and paid for collection via council tax. CRR also expressed concerns over the impact on the quality of material collected.

"It seems to us that the co-mingling and MRF processes decrease quality and can easily create rejects from materials that left the householder in good order," said campaign co-ordinator Andy Moore.

Meanwhile, John Simmons, chief executive of Recoup, expressed his own concerns that collection was designed to "pacify the public", and called for a "cradle to grave" approach to recycling because there was "no quick fix".

Speaking at a conference in London yesterday (29 April), he said that trying to recycle everything was not the best option because it "can contaminate the waste stream, and end up reducing prices of materials".

"There's no point in collecting materials if there's no end market, and the lack of energy from waste facilities in this country makes its difficult to get value from the waste output of MRFs."