Recycled waste could be stored on MoD bases

Sites are desperately being sought to house the UK's unwanted mountain of recyclable rubbish
Mark Townsend

The Observer, Sunday November 16 2008

Recyclers are battling against a slump in demand for materials. Huge waste mountains could be sited on military bases under emergency plans to protect Britain's recycling revolution from the economic downturn.
Local authorities have requested government permission to site rubbish dumps on Ministry of Defence land in order to stockpile growing amounts of recyclable waste for which there is no use and no market.
Under the proposals, thousands of tonnes of cars, tin cans, plastic bottles and glass will be temporarily stored on military-owned land because the financial crisis has induced a slump in demand for recycled raw materials from manufacturers. With landfill sites almost full, thousands of tonnes of paper, plastic and steel are piling up because councils can no longer find buyers.
Councils say they will apply for permission to store recycled paper and cardboard inside derelict factories or abandoned airfield hangars.
Paul Bettison, chairman of the Local Government Association's environment board, said: 'We have asked the government to allow us to use a couple of military establishments. They are perfect because they have large areas, nobody can see in and they are secure.
'In the past, the Ministry of Defence has stored mail during postal strikes. If we can start building a mountain of scrap iron, then we can sell it when the recyclable market returns, but we need somewhere to stockpile material.'
Environmentalists warn that, unless new locations are found quickly, government initiatives to promote recycling could be scuppered.'It has taken this long to get this far and we want to avoid people having to stop recycling. A place to store this material is needed until the market comes back,' said Bettison.
Although the amount of household waste sent for recycling or composting has increased by 10 per cent to 8.7million tonnes over the last year, the UK still lags behind the rest of Europe. Of an average of 495kg of household waste produced per person, 171kg is recycled, but green groups fear this will fall unless sites to store recycled waste are found.
However, critics argue that problems could build up if the economic downturn lasts longer than envisaged. A spokesman for the Campaign for Weekly Waste Collections said: 'What happens when the storage space fills up? Are they going to stop compulsory recycling because they have no market for the goods?'
Recycling and waste depots throughout the UK have filled up following the collapse of prices for metals and plastic in recent weeks. The value of paper and plastic bottles is now virtually nothing.
Major companies such as Corus have stopped accepting metals from local authorities because of reduced demand.
Campaigners warn that the UK now faces the prospect of thousands of abandoned cars littering the streets. They warn that the low price of metals means that scrap dealers will start charging motorists rather than offering them money to dispose of their vehicles, a move that would encourage drivers to dump unwanted vehicles.
Britain's landfill capacity would last until 2012 if recycled goods were buried underground. The LGA has lodged its plans with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which is considering whether they are workable. A spokesman for the MoD said it 'would consider a request', but it had not yet been formally approached by the LGA. A spokesman for the association said: 'We don't want to go down the route of having to hire warehouses to store waste.'
Recycling is seen as essential to tackling climate change because it reduces the energy required to make products while cutting levels of the most potent greenhouse gas - methane - which landfills leak into the atmosphere.