We are Recycling Services, a waste management company who provides a wide range of waste and recycling services.
What Impact Does Waste Have On Our Planet? Why Is Recycling Waste So Important?
Do you know what happens to waste in landfill? Whilst the waste decomposes it produces methane gas, which is an incredibly powerful greenhouse gas, far more powerful than carbon dioxide; around 30 times more powerful. In addition to this, landfills also produce a substance known as leachate. When rainwater falls on a landfill, the water passes through all of the waste disposed there. As the water passes through the waste, it can become toxic. This has the potential to pollute water and groundwater near the landfill. Thankfully measures have been put into place, as Leachate.co.uk writes “the use of linings is now mandatory within both the United States and the European Union”, with some exceptions such as locations where waste is “closely controlled and genuinely inert.”
So how can we reduce the amount of waste going to landfill? One of the methods at our disposal is recycling. Recycling-guide.org.uk wrote that up to 60% of the rubbish in our dustbins could be recycled, to put this into perspective; they wrote that the unreleased energy contained in the average dustbin in a year could power a television for 5,000 hours, that’s just over 208 days!
The Benefits Of Recycling
Recycling has many incredible benefits to our planet but it could also help us to save money. Manufacturing goods from recycled materials is significantly cheaper than creating them using the virgin source product. This is because it saves energy, keeping production costs lower; the saving of such can be passed on to the consumer. Another clear benefit of recycling is that it produces less carbon. As Care2 writes recycling “reduces the amount of unhealthy greenhouse gas omissions.”
By recycling more of our waste, we can reduce the amount of landfill needed, which has many benefits to the environment. We can reduce the amount of greenhouse gasses and leachate produced. Also landfills take up a lot of space and by recycling more and reducing the amount of landfills we need, we can instead use this space for businesses, homes or leave them as areas of natural beauty.
Zero To Landfill
In England alone approximately 177 million tonnes of waste is generated each year. Perhaps the issue with waste is that we think of waste as waste. What if instead of viewing waste as a material to be disposed of and thrown away, what if instead we thought of waste as a resource?
We are a waste management company who views waste as a resource. By following the waste hierarchy system you can take one step closer to achieving a zero to landfill waste management system.
The waste hierarchy is as followers in order from the most favoured option to the least favoured option:
Simple in theory, if you can prevent items from becoming waste, they are no longer items of waste to manage.
If you cannot prevent an item from becoming waste, perhaps you can minimise the amount of waste being generated.
Reusing waste is a fantastic way to manage the waste you produce. This can give them a second life before they become waste. For example, instead of discarding a plastic bottle, you could reuse it filling it with tap water, extending the life of the product.
By recycling waste you can reprocess waste products into new products. For example, ten plastic bottles could be recycled into plastic fibre and used to make a t-shirt.
5. Energy Recovery
Some forms of waste can be used as fuel to recover the energy in the waste. Whilst the idea of incinerating your waste may sound wasteful and harmful, some forms of energy recovery can use the CO2 emissions to provide a greenhouse with a supply of carbon dioxide to help the plants grow. Such a system is used in a solution described by Kevin Scoble in a TEDx talk where he discusses the carbon emissions related to growing a tomato.
At the bottom of the hierarchy, the least favourable choice is disposal. Disposal is the last choice because it is simply the disposal of waste. There is no recycling or even energy recovery; we are simply disposing of the waste.
Tailored Waste Management
We offer a number of services as a part of our waste management service. Some of the waste services we offer include:
What Can We Recycle?
We can recycle most commercial and industrial waste, our total recycling management solutions include:
Waste Management Services From Recycling Services
Using an extensive network of trustworthy suppliers we can deliver fantastic value and great service standards. We manage over 1 million tonnes of waste and recyclables every year for some of the largest companies in the UK.
In our opinion, every business needs a bespoke strategy to manage its commercial waste.
We can manage multiple types of waste, ranging from hazardous waste to recyclable waste. We can work with you to create a waste strategy tailor made to work for your business.
With commercial waste and recycling services from Recycling Services you can enjoy peace of mind and concentrate on your business. If you have any questions or concerns and would to like speak to our team of experts then you can contact us by telephone on 01952 204471.