From turning waste into energy to making composting compulsory, our attitudes to rubbish are set to change, whether we like it or not. Soon, long gone will be the days of black bags, disposable products, and non-recyclable materials. Waste management is about to change! Here are our top six predictions
for the future of recycling.
- Pay As You Throw
In the near future, not only will collection companies know whether your bin is full – they will also how much it weighs and what you put in it. This way, such companies will charge consumers depending on how much and what they throw away, incentivising customers to minimise their waste. Pay As You Throw (PAYT) programmes already operate in numerous North American, European, and Asian cities, and have been particularly successful in Taipei and San Francisco.
- Turning Organic Waste into Energy
Food and other biodegradable waste represent a vast, sustainable source of bioenergy. This is the future of energy generation. As market analyst Grand View Research has found, the global market for turning garbage into energy is expected to reach £29.57 billion by 2020. Soon, we will all be thinking twice before throwing our food away.
- Compulsory Composting
In 2012, only around 5% of the 26 million tons of global food waste avoided a landfill. In other words, there are millions of tons of wasted food that could be turned into organic compost for personal or collective use. It is time to stop neglecting this. Mandatory composting should, in the near future, be made a reality, so as to stop wasting and start saving our planet.
- Robotic Waste Collection
The robotic revolution is bound to struck recycling, too. Automated machines have started to make their way into the resource recovery industry, and it is now a matter of time before they start monopolising it. While this may cause some job losses, it will reduce the cost of recovery, improve the safety of workers, and decrease the impact of fly-tipping. Robotic waste collection is the future.
- Recycling the unrecyclable: Cigarettes!
Whether you believe or not, over 38% of litter on the road is tobacco and cigarette product waste. Yet, this may soon become a memory of the past. Through TerraCycle’s “Cigarette Waste Brigade” recycling programme, anyone can collect and send cigarette waste to TerraCycle, contributing to the recycling of cigarettes. Once there, tobacco and paper get composted, while filters are turned into industrial plastic products. Surely, more cities around the world will soon follow suit.
- Recycling education
Consumers should be educated on how to recycle. Firstly, schools ought to encourage children to take an interest in recycling and in the environment in a “hands on” way. Secondly, local councils should inform adults on how and where to recycle their waste. While some progress in both areas has been made, recycling education needs to evolve further in the future, and we are more than sure that it will.
Clearly, the future of recycling is bright. Yet, even in a perfect world, experts estimate that the maximum rate of recycling would be around 60 per cent.
It is thus up to us to exceed their expectations.
This is what we have to do if we are to save our planet.
