Public participation in plastics recycling schemes
Introduction
The Public enjoy a pivotal role in determining the route taken by domestic waste. They are central members of the packaging chain, and yet are often not considered as part of it. From the point of view of a recycling industry, the importance of this decision making power of the Public cannot be over estimated. Without the Public's conscious, collective decision to support an alternative route for their waste, there will be no raw material for the post-consumer waste recycling industries. This puts these industries in the unique position of not being able to purchase their feedstocks. Rather they must rely on the goodwill of the general public.
In spite of the importance of participation for recycling schemes there has been relatively little published about it. Studies that have been published about UK schemes include that of Turner and O'Riordan [1]which identified willingness to respond to paper and glass recycling initiatives in Norwich. Ball and Lawson's study [2]on uses of bottle banks gave important information on users and non-users of bottle bank schemes (known as bring schemes) and important insight into motivation of non-participants. Ball and Tavitian's paper [3]considered similar issues but in the context of a household collection (or collect scheme) for waste paper. Belton et al. [4]covered participation in Bring schemes in general through their work in Glasgow. Pocock [5]has done similar work in Birmingham. Other studies such as Friends of the Earth [6]have considered motivational questions in general. Although participation issues have been more widely addressed by the work of US psychologists (see Oskamp, [7]and McDonald [8]for summaries of this work), questions have been raised about the applicability of results from the US public to schemes in the UK [9]. It seems, however, that there have been no studies that cover plastics (with the exception of Coombs and Minion [10]) or any that compare bring and collect schemes in detail.
Plastics currently make up around 7% of the UK domestic waste stream. Although plastics present some particular difficulties, linked to sorting and an inherently high volume to weight ratio, it is perfectly feasible to recycle this material. Unlike the current UK target to recycle around 25% of domestic waste by the year [11], impending EC legislation [12]will mean that targets will soon specify proportions of packaging waste to be recycled by material. Thus within a general target of 50 to 65% of packaging being recovered from the domestic waste stream (of which 25 to 45% must be recycled), 15% of plastics will be required to be recycled by 2001.
At the moment there are around 130 plastics collection schemes in the UK. These are mainly set up by local authorities and co-ordinated by RECOUP, an industry funded body dedicated to the development of post-consumer plastics waste recycling in the UK. Together, these schemes divert around 1.7% (4200 tonnes) of plastics from the domestic waste stream for recycling. Plastics recycling is much less established in the UK than other materials such as glass, paper or metals, and therefore has a much less developed infrastructure. Perhaps due to these factors, it also has a much lower diversion rate than other materials. A recent study by David Pearce [13], for example, estimates that around 25% of paper is currently being recycled in the UK. It is clear that the post-consumer plastics recycling industry has a long way to go in both the provision of a level of service and the development of a level of participation that can approach the targets laid down by the EC. This study therefore aims to study the recycling of post-consumer plastics waste, attempting to introduce an element of comparison between alternative collection methods, and examine public perceptions of plastics in order to discover whether there are beliefs which might prohibit the successful growth of plastics recycling in the UK.
Section snippets
The study
This study surveyed members of the public served by two plastics collection schemes in Scotland associated with BXL Ltd (a plastics recovery firm based in Yorkshire). The bring scheme studied was situated in Glasgow. Initially around 50 banks were located in residential areas, shopping centres or supermarkets, and public places such as car parks. Many were placed near existing recycling facilities, although some were on new sites. The scheme was originally aimed at the recovery of all plastics
Methodology
The research instrument used for this study was a survey of members of the public using a structured questionnaire. The results were collated on a spreadsheet and analysed using simple quantitative techniques. Structured questionnaires allow `the collection of information in standardised form from groups of people' [14]. One strength of the questionnaire as a research instrument is that it presents the opportunity to record a variety of information from a relatively large number of people in a
Characteristics of participants
In order to ensure that future efforts to enhance recycling schemes are effective it is important to build up an understanding of the common characteristics of participants. In Glasgow, of the 300 individuals interviewed, 117 were scheme users whereas the remaining 183 were not. The proportion of users was higher in Falkirk where 144 of the 200 households included in the study were users.
Table 1 gives a breakdown by age of users for both the Glasgow and Falkirk schemes, as well as the
Conclusions
This study shows that bring schemes for plastics waste can expect to be patronised by similar sections of the public to other materials. Results reported here show a particularly high participation rate for the 60+ age group in Glasgow, which is consistent with other studies of bring schemes 2, 4, 5. It might be interesting to carry out further work which focuses on the differences between this group of willing recyclers and other groups in order to ascertain which factors influence their
Acknowledgements
This research was supported by a PhD Studentship from the Science and Engineering Research Council, Polaris House, North Star Avenue, Swindon, UK and BXL Recovery Plastics Ltd., Barnsley, Yorkshire, UK. The authors would like to thank Fiona MacIntosh and Pete O'Malley for their help with data collection for this project.
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