by Brianna Crandall — May 1, 2013—New research by the Green Alliance environmental think tank shows that £2.5 billion of resources could be recovered each year by extending landfill bans in the United Kingdom. According to the report, if food, textiles, wood, and plastics had landfill restrictions similar to those already used for cars and waste electronics, at least £2.5 billion worth of resources would be kept in production each year.
Why We Need Landfill Bans shows that the policies preventing cars and waste electronics from going to landfill have been effective at improving recycling rates and increasing the resource value recovered from discarded products. A full 92% of discarded mobile phones were sent to landfill in the United States in 2009, whereas in the United Kingdom 25% of the phones were recovered in 2010, with recovery rates expected to be 80% by 2020. The main difference is that there is a landfill diversion policy in the U.K., says the Green Alliance.
Similarly, in 2003, the U.K. spent £88 million landfilling and collecting illegally dumped cars. A policy introduced later that year, to prohibit dumping and landfilling, has since reaped £29 million in recovered resources.
Dustin Benton, senior policy adviser at Green Alliance, said, “It seems obvious that the rising cost of raw materials should automatically keep many materials out of landfill, but we’re burying most of this value in the ground. Landfill is still the default option. Gradually banning valuable materials from landfill would stimulate better collection and recycling infrastructure and, as our research shows, there’s £2.5 billion to be gained from reclaiming more resources each year.”
“Our previous work showed that landfill bans in the U.S. and E.U. helped recover valuable materials. This report shows that well-designed landfill restrictions have pushed us to capture much more value from resources in the U.K. too. It no longer makes sense to let valuable materials end up in landfill.”
