ry. Its doorstep scheme reached just 9 per cent of households in 2002-3. Although Sheffield Council has reported to us that they are now reaching 85 per cent of properties with their scheme, they still have a long way to go.
South Lakeland SITA collects just one material, paper, from half the households in South Lakeland. The other half of households receives no collection.
Kettering Borough Council Although Kettering offers a 4 material collection to some of its households, the vast majority – 89% – do not get any service at all.
City of London The waste management company Bywaters collects paper and card mixed together from just 37% of City of London households.
Middlesbrough Borough Council Only paper is collected in Middlesbrough (by Cheshire Recycling). The council acknowledges that it will need to catch up with other authorities by collecting more types of materials within the next year or so.
Liverpool City Council Liverpool offers a collection of just 1 material, paper, and 15% of its households don’t even get that.
Friends of the Earth ‘Doorstep Recycling in England’
Friends of the Earth ‘Doorstep Recycling in England’
Also of note is the spread of waste across England, with specific high concentrations of waste producing districts in the West Midlands and South West, and how this relates to the relevant areas performance of doorstep collections. There is negative correlation, with Greater London producing the least waste, yet offering the highest percentage of councils collecting the maximum number of recyclable materials.
Textile Recycling – textile recycling in the fashion industry
Textile recycling falls into the category that is least well documented and the data often confused, a variety of items may or may not be counted as textiles, and the data, as seen here varies wildly.
It is estimated that 400,000 to 700,000 tonnes of textiles are land filled every year, worth an estimated £400 million. At least 50% of the textiles going to landfill are recyclable. The amount of textile waste reused or recycled annually in the UK is estimated to be 250,000 tonnes.
Severn Waste Management, the contract operators for waste management within the Hereford and Worcestershire districts retained no corroborative data to support their claim that 400 tonnes of textiles from its collection points in the Pershore area was actually recycled.
There were no statistics available either from any of the major charities regarding the percentage of its clothing, unsuitable ‘for sale’, getting recycled, or specifically its exact destination.
Potential destinations for recycled textiles:
- Abroad – to be worn typically in developing nations
- Home – to be reused, as is resold or handed down
- Reprocessing – fibre content broken down to be reused – Khadi Board – Backpack Canvas
- Rags – to be used in various industries
Households donating unsuitable items for resale in this country might simply be offsetting the problem of locked in chemical land fill to another country.
Or delaying the time for that garment to become unusable in this country then be irresponsible disposed of; turned to rags which, once used are unsuitable for reprocessing, contaminated and incinerated or land filled.
- Of the garments not sold in the shops, 70 per cent are sold overseas. Good quality, second-hand clothing is packed for export sale to more than 18 countries.
- The majority goes to Africa, where there is huge demand for quality, affordable, second-hand clothing.
- Another 25 per cent of items collected are recycled for the fibre content, or for use as mattress filling or as industrial wiper cloths.
- Only five per cent ends up as unusable ‘waste’.9
Reprocessing of Recycled / Reclaimed fabric – making Khadi
The nature of textile design means that in any taken sample of donated or collected textiles a vast range of fibre types will be found.
As a recycling solution this presents a problem, immediately meaning that sorting needs to be extensive, usually involving a human and manual element. The nature of clothing and fashion also predisposes the articles to 