Local councils are often boasting of what percentage of waste they are recycling, and the general public feels they deserve a pat on the back for washing out our plastic pot and glass jars, saving cardboard boxes and packaging from the landfill, and doing our part for the environment.

However, a recent report on the final destinations for recycling collected from Surrey has shown it can create quite the carbon footprint, ending up as far away as China and the USA, according to County Border News.

The End Destinations Report for 2018/19 shows that mattresses dropped off at Surrey’s community recycling centres (CRCs) are ending up in Portugal while plastic, paper and card put in recycling bins outside houses is sent for sorting and reprocessing to places like China, The Netherlands, Turkey, Vietnam, Taiwan and Indonesia.

There are calls from the Green Party members of Surrey County Council (SCC) for action to be taken to reduce carbon emissions by transporting waste abroad and to ensure that our waste can be recycled, processed, and reused in the UK.

Jonathan Essex, the Green member for Redhill East, said: “The council must invest to make it easier to reuse and recycle, and enable better recycling – separating our paper from other recycling, for example, so it can be processed in the UK.”

The party argues that investing in new enterprises to remanufacture and reprocess waste in the UK will create jobs and reduce carbon emissions.

The 11 boroughs and distracts in Surrey all have different methods for the collection and handling of recyclable waste. Cllr Essex said there needed to be a better separation of recycling so it can be handled more locally.

He added: “Significant amounts of Surrey’s paper waste is not sent to paper mills because of the risk of glass and plastic contamination. Reigate and Banstead collect paper waste separately, which can be recycled into cardboard in Kent.”

While not all locations were listed in the report, Waverley was the only borough in which all the recycling ended up at UK destinations.

Elmbridge Borough Council sent its paper and card to nine different locations including China, The Netherlands, Germany and Belgium. Runnymede Borough Council sent its to Turkey and Indonesia.

SCC was on the report as sending plastic waste to Turkey and other unspecified areas outside of the EU, as well as mattresses to Portugal, and mixed metal cans to Illinois in the USA.

It was reported last year that plastic bags with UK council logos were found dumped in Malaysia after recycling infrastructure was overwhelmed by demand.

Sam Peters, Surrey Green Party coordinator, said: “With several Surrey councils sending plastic waste to the south-east and east Asia, the public cannot be certain that their efforts to recycle at home are as effective as they should be.”

District and borough councils are responsible for the collection of food and garden waste and dry mixed recycling (DMR) from households. As SCC is the waste planning authority, they take the majority of the waste materials and through its contractor, Suez, arranges the sorting and reprocessing.

All the food and garden waste is recycled in the UK, and DMR is either transported to a materials recovery facility (MRF) for sorting or can be bulked at a waste transfer station and then transported to an MRF either here in the UK or abroad. This can change regularly depending on the demand and availability of space.

A statement from Joint Waste Solutions, which published the report, said: “Suez seeks to achieve the best value for the material it receives and builds resilience into its system, which means using different facilities at different times, resulting in most material staying in the UK but some going abroad.

“Some DMR continues to be disposed of by district and borough councils, but the responsibility for this will be passed to SCC once the contracts they have with suppliers come to an end. The end destination of the material will change regularly as UK sorting companies seek to maximise the value of the material.”

SCC is currently reviewing its Waste Local Plan and made the decision last year to keep CRCs open rather than close them due to cost-cutting.

An SCC spokesman said: “We encourage residents to reduce what they throw away or reuse what they can as this means we’re all creating less waste, which means we can spend less council tax on waste disposal and more on our services.

“We always work with our suppliers to maximise the value of recycling from UK-based re-processors but these can change due to market forces.”

However, in response to the coronavirus pandemic, municipal rubbish dumps have closed, and an increasing number of local councils are cutting collections of food and garden waste and DMR, and announcing changes to their recycling collections as staff become ill or are forced to self-isolate, while many more are warning residents there could be disruption to services.

The UK’s major recycling and waste management companies, along with industry and local government bodies, issued a joint statement saying they are working hard to ensure bin collections continue.

But with pickups of general rubbish prioritised, householders are being warned some non-essential collection services such garden and bulky waste might have to be suspended. Disruption to recycling collections would be a last resort, they said.

Household waste and recycling centres may be closed, and some street cleaning and litter removal services may also need to be temporarily suspended, to prioritise household collections in the face of staff shortages.

Waste and resources company Suez said household waste and recycling centres it operates in Greater Manchester, Cornwall, Calderdale and Blackburn and Darwen have shut, with many more expected to follow suit.

Reductions in collections of kitchen scraps come amid concerns that there will be an increase in food waste as people throw away the fresh food they had stockpiled in panic-buying which saw supermarket shelves emptied.

Adam Read, external affairs director for Suez, said: “It is too early for us to see an upward trend in the data for household food waste collections. However, with people cooking and eating more if not all of their meals at home as we become a nation of home-workers and home-schoolers, we would expect to see a rise in food waste collected from households in the coming weeks.”

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