Taking it to the curb: Britons warm to recycling

Lizzie Gant was never big on recycling. Everything went in the trash: paper, plastic wrapping, batteries, even expired electrical goods.

Then the local council gave her neighborhood a heavy hint: a big orange sack, a few do's and don'ts, and a collection date. It caught on. "On Fridays now, the street is just covered in these orange bags," she says. "You can put anything in there. You don't even have to sort things out."

It's the same story up and down the country. A silent revolution seems to be rippling through British garbage at last. Recycling rates are climbing sharply, rising to almost 25 percent of household waste from barely 7 percent a decade ago. The amount of trash dumped in landfill has finally started to fall: at 22 million tons, last year's figure was a million tons lower than for the preceding year.

Despite the enthusiasm, Britain still has one of the poorest recycling rates in Europe and remains far more dependent on landfill than other similar-sized European countries like the Netherlands and Austria, which recycle more than 50 percent of household waste. Recycled materials, moreover, often are shipped to countries like China because there aren't enough uses for them at home.

Experts and even government ministers now admit that with landfill sites rapidly filling and space at a premium, a breakthrough needs to happen: Britons need to generate less waste in the first place.

"We are still in first gear," said Ben Bradshaw, Britain's environment minister. "The amount of waste we produce continues to rise and much of this still goes to landfill. Compared with many other European countries we still produce more, but recycle less, household waste per head."

A department official adds, on customary condition of anonymity: "We need to put more emphasis on buying and making products which create less waste in the first place. After all, if there's no waste produced, there is no need to dispose of it."

The key concern is that Britain will struggle to meet EU-imposed targets of 50 percent of household trash to be recycled by 2020. Failure would imply large fines.

As a result, taxes, incentives, and innovations have mushroomed. A landfill tax has been hiked exponentially; councils have responded by encouraging residents to recycle, doling out plastic boxes and establishing curbside collection. Some councils text-message residents with night-before reminders; others reward regular recyclers with entries in prize drawings and lotteries, or shopping, holiday, and leisure vouchers.

The green issue has even broken into mainstream politics. In a country with only nascent environmental reflexes, all three major parties are jostling for the green vote in next week's important local elections. The new Conservative leader, David Cameron, has been exhorting his support to "vote blue, go green." Labour's manifesto includes the rather obscure promise of "extending curbside recycling collection of at least two types of recyclable materials to all households in England by 2010."

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