The United Kingdom uses an enormous amount of plastic every year and is estimated that we use five million’s tonnes of it. For this reason, it is vital that as much of it is recycled, reused, or responsibly disposed of.
Most of the plastic produced in the United Kingdom can be recycled but it depends on technical and logistic factors. Currently 29% of the plastic used is recycled.
You will find plastic just about everywhere is it is widely used in food packaging, business waste and drink bottles and these are made from one of the 50 types of plastic that are made. The reason that it is so widely used is that it can prolong the life of food and protect items from damage.
There are four main ways that plastic waste can be reduced and this by prevention, disposal, recycling and other recovery.
Prevention is by making the product last a lot longer so they are not discarded as fast. Also by using less hazardous material it will make it safer.
Disposal is used in a landfill when there is energy recovery which produces energy for the national grid.
By recycling, there is no need for the items to be disposed of as it will be turned into something else.
The other recovery method also uses energy recovery by using incineration instead of a landfill.
You can find out more about these methods from the HSE website.
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