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England’s Recycling Rate Down as Just 43.4% of Household Waste Recycled

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29 Sep, 2024

This post was originally published on Eco Watch

According to government data, the recycling rate of waste from households in England was 43.4 percent in 2022 — the most recent information available.

The rate was down from the previous year, when 44.1 percent of households recycled their waste.

England is the only United Kingdom nation whose recycling rate did not show improvement in 2022, reported The Guardian. The lowest rate for that year was in Scotland at 42.1 percent, but that was an improvement from the year before.

“It is deeply disappointing to see recycling rates have fallen, and to see the buildup of litter and fly-tipping in our cities, towns and villages,” said Mary Creagh, circular economy minister, as The Guardian reported. “The new government will move towards a zero-waste economy to increase recycling rates, draw in billions from private sector investment and create thousands of green jobs.”

In England, the weight of “waste from households” was down by 7.2 percent — from 23.1 million tonnes to 21.5 million tonnes — between 2021 and 2022, the statistics showed.

The recycling rate in Wales was 56.9 percent due to Welsh households having had food waste containers for over a decade, and local authorities prioritizing the improvement of recycling rates in the country. In some areas, the rate of recycling was 70 percent.

Northern Ireland’s recycling rate was also higher than Scotland and England at 49.2 percent.

In the rest of Europe, recycling rates were higher than in the UK. The household rate in the European Union was 49 percent, with the bloc’s minimum target set at 50 percent.

Germany had the highest recycling rate in the EU — 68 percent in 2021.

Bottle recycling was delayed in the UK this year — nearly a decade after the plan was initially announced.

Of the 191.2 million tonnes of waste generated by the UK in 2020, England was responsible for 85 percent.

“These statistics should be a wake-up call for the new government. Our recycling system is falling behind while mountains of waste are dumped, burned or shipped off to poorer countries. It is being undermined by huge volumes of cheap virgin plastic flooding the market. We need a bold new approach which focuses on reducing the amount of waste we produce in the first place,” said Rudy Schulkind, a Greenpeace UK political campaigner, as reported by The Guardian. “This November, the final round of negotiations on the global plastics treaty offers a last-chance saloon to tackle plastic pollution. We need a strong, legally binding global target to cut plastic production.”

The post England’s Recycling Rate Down as Just 43.4% of Household Waste Recycled appeared first on EcoWatch.

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Land water loss causes sea level rise in 21st century

Land water loss causes sea level rise in 21st century

An international team of scientists, led jointly by The University of Melbourne and Seoul National University, has found global water storage on land has plummeted since the start of the 21st century, overtaking glacier melt as the leading cause of sea level rise and measurably shifting the Earth’s pole of rotation.

Published in Science, the research combined global soil moisture data estimated by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecast (ECMWF) Reanalysis v5 (ERA5), global mean sea level measurements and observations of Earth’s pole movement in order to estimate changes in terrestrial (land) water storage (TWS) from 1979 to 2016.

“The study raises critical questions about the main drivers of declining water storage on land and whether global lands will continue to become drier,” University of Melbourne author Professor Dongryeol Ryu said.

“Water constantly cycles between land and oceans, but the current rate of water loss from land is outpacing its replenishment. This is potentially irreversible because it’s unlikely this trend will reverse if global temperatures and evaporative demand continue to rise at their current rates. Without substantial changes in climate patterns, the imbalance in the water cycle is likely to persist, leading to a net loss of water from land to oceans over time.”

Between 2000 and 2002, soil moisture decreased by around 1614 gigatonnes (1 Gt equals 1 km3 of water) — nearly double Greenland’s ice loss of about 900 Gt in 2002–2006. From 2003 to 2016, soil moisture depletion continued, with an additional 1009 Gt lost.

Soil moisture had not recovered as of 2021, with little likelihood of recovery under present climate conditions. The authors say this decline is corroborated by independent observations of global mean sea level rise (~4.4 mm) and Earth’s polar shift (~45 cm in 2003–2012).

Water loss was most pronounced across East and Central Asia, Central Africa, and North and South America. In Australia, the growing depletion has impacted parts of Western Australia and south-eastern Australia, including western Victoria, although the Northern Territory and Queensland saw a small replenishment of soil moisture.

Image credit: iStock.com/ZU_09

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