It’s time to make rubbish bins unnecessary

None of it will be recycled – it will likely go to landfill or be burned, both scarring the planet. Instead, each and every gram is a sign of our ‘single use culture’.

There’s no doubt that in the last 25 years, as a nation we have improved both our eco-consciousness and our recycling habits. In 2023, kerbside recycling has become commonplace, and most people ‘do’ their recycling by default. Rates of collection have increased from around 8% of household waste in 2000 to more than 45% now.

But Greenpeace figures show that despite that big increase in collection, only 10% of the UK’s plastics are actually recycled.

What is even more shocking is the sheer quantity of stuff we throw away has increased tenfold over the past century, with levels set to increase again by 70 percent by 2050.

I grew up in a family of six. We had one bin, collected weekly. It was rarely full. Now the wheelie bins at our London apartment block are emptied every day, often overflowing. We dutifully separate out rubbish into two or three bins – recycling, food waste and of course the “general waste” in black bin bags that still makes up approximately 55% of what the country chucks away.

We throw waste away into one of three or more bins and never think about it again, trusting it will have a good end. But there are countless reports of UK waste that we think will be recycled actually being shipped off to faraway lands or just incinerated, all producing toxic chemicals that pollute our planet and poison our bodies.

The UK government is now proposing that every household doubles its number of bins from three to six, asking us to separate glass, metal (cans and tins), plastic (bottles and trays), paper and card, food waste and garden waste.

The reforms have provoked a plethora of questions to A Plastic Planet, as one of the country’s leading waste reduction campaigners. I am frequently asked, ‘What do you think of this new idea of 6 bins in every kitchen?’ and ‘Is this a good way to increase the quality of recycling?’ and ‘Will the public actually do it?’.

But those are the wrong questions. In supposedly enlightened 2023, we should be asking not ‘how many bins is the right number?, but ‘why is there a bin at all?’.

The black bin bag should be seen as a symbol of shame: the embodiment of our take, make and throwaway culture.

It is well understood that our single-use lifestyle is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions and the climate crisis. In the US manufacturing accounts for almost a quarter (23%) of direct carbon emissions, according to the Environmental Protection Agency and in Europe an annual total of 880 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalents are emitted.

The very concept of ‘single-use’ was born as we escalated our dependence on plastic. We have taken more natural resource from our planet in the last 6 years than in the entire 20^th century. So why on earth do we continue to believe it’s fine endlessly to plunder the planet’s finite resources making single-use items, and then throwing them away?

No matter how complex government makes the process of collecting recycling, plastic materials are only ever effectively repurposed twice. The supermarket take-back schemes of flexible plastics often end up recycling them into, guess what, the black bin bag. Could there be a sadder symbol of single-useless than billions more of those in the name of circularity. So we need instead to think about how to design everything so it is used again and again.

This would provoke a waste revolution. Ask yourself how different it would be if all the packaging you ever received was made to be reused. And what if there were no general waste bin at all? Mightn’t that make us all think differently?

Waste may seem normal but it certainly isn’t natural. Humans are the only species which produces rubbish. The rest of nature is waste-free: everything becomes the fuel, the nutrient for the next cycle of growth, even our own bodies.

So I have come to a conclusion many people won’t like: it’s time to ban the bin. Government could put industry on notice that there will be no more “general waste” collections at all by 2030. Food waste would be collected (as is already planned) for organic recycling, and all other non-recyclable items would have to be produced on a re-use model.