First glimpse of rubbish mountains caused by recycling industry slump

This towering heap of waste plastic and paper demonstrates how the economic downturn has prevented councils from recycling household rubbish.

Patrick Sawer, The Telegraph 3 Jan 09;

A slump in demand for recyclable materials means local authorities and their contractors cannot shift the waste and are being forced to store it in stockpiles, such as this one in the north east of England.

At Greencycle's warehouse, in County Durham, the mountain of paper, card, glass and plastic bottles now weighs almost 3,000 tonnes. Before the current crisis, the site would normally contain just 500 tonnes of waste at any one time.

The stockpile began to grow when the market for recycled card, paper and other materials dried up.

Paper mills and other recycling processors shut their doors to new deliveries, leaving suppliers in the UK with increasing amounts of rubbish on their hands.

Neil Rippon, managing director of Greencycle - which collects recycling waste for several councils in the north east and Cheshire - said: "We've never seen anything like it in the industry. Overnight the firms we supply with recyclable material suddenly didn't want to take any of it. They just shut down."

It has been a similar picture at other recycling firms around the country, with cardboard and paper, glass and bottles being stockpiled at depots in Devon, Essex and Teesside.

The crisis has begun to ease in the past few days, with mills and other processors once more accepting deliveries. However the market is still volatile and the price paid for recyclable waste has remained at a record low, raising the fear that more local authorities will begin dumping it in landfill sites.

The price of recycled cans has fallen from £200 a tonne to £20 a tonne. Paper and card has fallen from £60 a tonne to just £10 a tonne, while certain plastics have halved to around £50 a tonne.

There are also fears that an increase in recycling over the Christmas period - as families throw out gift and toy packaging - will lead to a surge in material collected, adding to the amount already held in depots.

Closed Loop, one of Britain's largest plastics recycling firms, has rented extra space at its Dagenham site to allow it to store around 4,500 tonnes of plastic bottles it collects from local authorities as a way of absorbing the slack in the market.

Its chief executive Chris Dow said it was prepared to stockpile until the market had improved.

He said: "Prices are not really the issue here. Recycling one tonne of plastic bottles saves 1.5 tonnes of carbon emissions. That's no different today to what it was before prices fell. The public and local authorities have been very good at collecting materials and we will carry on collecting those materials and soaking up any excess supplies because we don't want to leave them sitting on huge amounts."

The Local Government Association (LGA) reports that over a quarter of councils have increased their temporary storage capacity for recycled waste in anticipation of a worsening situation, but so far only a handful have actually begun stockpiling.

But the LGA urged households to carry on recycling, saying the alternative of pouring greater amounts of rubbish into landfill was more harmful.

Cllr Paul Bettison, Chairman of the LGA Environment Board, said: "The Christmas period generates millions of tonnes of extra rubbish, and it is vital that residents continue to recycle as much of their waste as possible. The alternative would be for the rubbish to go into landfill, which is expensive for the council taxpayer and damaging to the environment."

In a bid to avoid the problem the Environment Agency has urged people to give more of their unwanted products to charity rather than leave them for recycling. These could include clothes, books and electrical goods.