On an average, each one of UK’s households produces one tonne of rubbish per year. Nationally, a total of 31 million tonnes of waste is produced annually. Tesco generated 46,684 tons of food waste in 2016-2017. Reliable statistics clearly reveal that Britain’s mountain of waste can fill the nation’s largest lake, Lake Windermere in just eight months. If the waste was deposited into Albert Hall, London, it would be full in two hours.
Considering this staggering figure, you may be wondering how the rubbish removal of such an amount is accomplished. Well, there are environment-friendly ways to dispose of waste. This waste produced nationally can be recycled and also turned into a source of energy. To be able to put this waste to good use, reputable rubbish clearance companies must be used.
Well, here is a surprising fact. The waste produced by each household annually in Britain is enough to produce 5,000 hours of electricity to power a TV, run about 3,500 showers and 500 baths.
Yet, most of the waste produced in Britain such as plastic bottles are never sustainably disposed of. The plastic bottles are mostly never recycled, either commercially or domestically. If you care about your environment, this fact more than makes the case for using reputable companies.
Here are more interesting facts about waste management in Britain.
Recycling Plastic Bags
Britons use over 500 million plastic bags weekly. Surprisingly, if the plastic bags are deposited at a landfill, they can take between 500 to 1000 years to decompose. And during all this time, they’ll be largely responsible for a number of variable factors that affect the environment.
The Welsh government in 2011 passed a law to encourage citizens to reuse their plastic bags. Shops are required by law to charge 5 pc for every new plastic bag used by a shopper. This plastic bag levy has reduced usage of plastic bags by 90% in Wales.
Water Consumption
Most people rarely notice that water can be wasted too. Research shows that many homes in the United Kingdom waste a lot of water through leaking taps and dripping showers. If all leaking water in Britain was stopped, the water saved would be enough to supply 120,000 households with water for an entire day.
Paper Recycling
It is estimated that the every UK citizen uses, on average, about 200kgs of paper and cardboard per year. Nationally, Britain consumes 12.5 million tonnes of paper per year. The number of trees to produce this amount of paper would cover a forest the size of Wales.
Surprisingly, the amount of wrapping paper used during the festive season in Britain is enough to go round the earth along the equator nine times. This figure does not consider the paper used for other purposes during this time, such as cards and packaging. As well, during the festive season, a lot of food gets thrown away.
This wasted food, unfortunately, is not recyclable. The paper is recyclable, though. It can be reused as a newspaper in less than a week after disposal.
Glass Recycling
Britons use a whopping 2.4 million tonnes of glass annually. If the glass containers are not recycled after use, these can result in an enormous load of garbage. Unlike what you may expect, the glass bottles can be recycled an average of 13 times before they lose their purity.
Producing glass bottles from recycled glass has a number of energy saving benefits. Each glass bottle produces enough energy to power a TV for 15 minutes, a washing machine for 10 minutes, and a 100 Watts bulb for an entire house. Using a company for rubbish clearance will help your used glass bottles get to their collection point efficiently, from where they are taken for recycling.
Salman is a prolific environmental writer, and has authored more than 500 articles in reputed journals, magazines and websites. He is proactively engaged in creating mass awareness on renewable energy, waste management, sustainability and conservation all over the world.
Salman can be reached on salman@cleantechloops.com
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Excellent website and gained some great information to help my up and coming services in the Nottigham area, thank you