| Comment | Recycling in Scotland is a really new process actually. Historically recycling waste was shipped overseas, this still happens in a lot of instances such as e-waste.
Previously the majority of our "recycling" was shipped to south east Asia & parts of Africa, generally it was simply land filled there, instead of in the UK, which ticked the box in terms of 'recycling'. (edit: I can't remember where I heard this number, but about 11% of plastic waste shipped to China was recycled in new production).
However in 2018 China banned the import of many types of waste, including plastics, and much of south east Asia followed their lead, which resulted in a ton of recycling simply going to landfill here, which obviously made the green folk at our councils go off their nut when it was suddenly a problem occuring on our doorstep rather than someone elses, so a lot of processes have been developed for over the last 5 years domestically for reprocessing waste. |
|---|