Here’s one of the less predictable side issues emerging from the issues aired around the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference.

It’s an insight into the extent to which the recycling culture is itself increasing the production of hydro-carbons and adding to pollution.

Some of the key points are:

• Recycling means that households have had to bee issued with an additional series of plastic bins – which have to be produced to serve this market, creating more of the damaging oil-product related hydrocarbons.
• Bigger, newer trucks with more sophisticated equipment have had to be manufactured and operated to collect and process recycled waste. These are also less fuel efficient than the old bin lorries.
• The differentiation of different kinds of recyclable waste materials and and the provision of large scale public collection points increases the need for different kinds of trucks and more journeys on the road for private cars and  specialist vehicles alike.
• The requirement to wash glass and plastic materials before adding them to recycling bins means that people are using more water to do this – and people on water meters are paying for the privilege of doing this. Global warming and the growing pressure on water supplies makes this additional use problematic.

As a separate but related issue, there is the enduring and little known chaos over paper product recycling.

The Westminster Government initiated large scale recycling of paper and card without having in place adequate agreed and operational systems to deal with the collected materials.

So paper and card collected across the UK was amassing in the south of England, progressively degrading – and required vast warehouses to be built to store it indoors pending the eventual resolution of a typical British mess.

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