Recycling Waste A Business Problem

Introduction

Over the past decade recycling has become a main concern for the United Kingdom with the main conundrum being how does the United Kingdom become pro- recycling. A recent article states that ‘’ Recycling rates in the UK have come a long way in recent years and continue to grow year on year. For example, in the year 2000 only 13,000 tonnes of plastic bottles got recycled; the UK now recycles over 350,000 tonnes a year’’ (Dickenson G,2013). this means that in just under two decades recycling rates have increased by 2592% significantly decreasing both water and air pollution. However, the main concern that comes with plastics I the recovery due to the fact in 2017, 46.2% of total packaging wastage of plastics were recovered and recycled (Government Statistical Service,2019) as seen in figure 1. Nevertheless, this statistic shows that the UK recovery is very good as the EU expected recovery rate is of plastics is 22.5%.

In terms of recycling, a way in which the United Kingdom is trying to recycle more is by putting recycling bins in public areas so in order to see whether this method of recycling is effective, team 7 will be trying to prove that CU Coventry is pro recycling by showing that the usage of recycling bins outweighs the usage of waste bins. In order to prove this statement team 7 has placed a number of objectives to further help and give team 7 a better understanding of their investigation; objectives such as:

• Is the waste being placed in the right bins
• Collect data on the level of usage of these bins
• Count how many people there are in each of the five sites
• Do a questionnaire to ask people about CU Coventry and the recycling bins
• Collect data on the type of materials being put in the bins

PET Plastics

Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) plastic is a durable thermoplastic with tough resistance to chemicals. This plastic is most commonly used for making both water and soft drink bottles which accounts for a large percentage of plastic waste. As seen by figure 5 the reason for PET being used frequently is also because it is very easy to recycle ‘’because the polymer chain breaks down at a relatively low temperature, and so there is no degradation of the polymer chain during the recycling process. This allows PET to be recycled a large number of times before it becomes unusable, though contamination can reduce the number of ‘closed loop’ cycles that PET can go through’’ (G.P. Thomas 2012). This, therefore, allows PET to be recycled multiple making PET cost-effective.

Figure 2 most commonly used plastics 2019 (V Crowe 2019)

LDPE Plastics

Low-Density Polyethylene (LDPE) is both soft and flexible which also shows good chemical resistance. LDPE plastics are very commonly found in paper bags which around the world has had the most controversy due its reputation of harming marine life. As seen by figure 5 LDPE is as easy as PET to recycle as ‘’the recycling company melts the plastic to eliminate contaminants. After putting the low-density polyethene under heat, the material is fashioned into thin plastic sheets, which the recycling company then sells to manufacturers’’ (C Hamilton 2017)the main reason why LDPE is not easy to recycle is due to the melting of the plastic as fumes are let out into the air which environmentally has a negative effect due to it polluting the air. However, business manage to contain the fumes which is the reason for LDPE being manageable.

Figure 3 most commonly used plastics 2019 (V Crowe 2019)

Figure 4 Number of authorities in each region showing an increase in their recycling rate of 0.1 percentage point or more in 2017/18 compared to 2016/17

Figure 5 West Midlands 2014/2015 Waste & Recycling Statistics (Luke M,2015)

As seen in figure 4 and figure 5, west midlands have been struggling to become more pro-cycling with there being a small increase of 9% with authorities in the region. Due to the fact that Coventry was ranked 26 in west midland for recycling rate ‘’ Coventry City Council is planning to pump almost £11 million into a new recycling facility in the city, which it says will help cut existing costs in half.’’ (Davis T,2019). This is highly beneficial for Coventry due to the fact that would have been sending waste to another location meaning that it would not have been cost-effective.

Methodology

when it comes to the design of the research both quantitative and qualitative design was chosen due to the fact that the group could numerically count the number of bins however could not get an accurate number of plastic litter that were in these bins. When carrying out the quantitative data team 1 would count the number of bins inside the site and secondly count the number of customers using recyclable materials for example plastic water bottles. When looking at these bins it is very important to look at the type of bins they are and how pro-recycling are the bins that were most important as team 1 could see if people were putting litter in the allocated bin as seen in figure 7.

Figure 7 site 3-second floor

For the qualitative data external data was collected where team 1 would label the level of litter inside the bins as low, medium or high level of litter, once this has been done the bin is given a number based on the level it has been given for instance a low rating is 1-3, a medium is 4-6 and high is 7-3. This would therefore help the group understand the types of materials that are being used inside the site and also help the team compare the different bins around the site if there are multiple. Secondly team 1 would look outside shops to analyse the level of litter/waste and try to find a correlation between the exterior and interior of the shop. In addition, with external data would allow team 7 to analyse if there are local environmental impacts. This data collection lasts for three weeks every Thursday as weekdays are the days where data is most reliable due to the CU Coventry being open to all students on these days, therefore, making our data collection more realistic and reliable. Secondly doing it on the same day will give us a controlled variable thus making the investigation technique more reliable.

Results & Discussion

As seen in figure 8 recycling bins are used more often than waste bins with the average rating of recycle bins being 5.67 whereas waste is 2.88. This is most likely due to the fact that almost all of the materials used in the CU Coventry building are recyclable; secondly due to the recycle bin hole being larger compared to the waste hole in team 7’s opinion-making you want to recycle. Secondly, the results also showed that bin 3 was the most used bin out of the 8 with an average of 6.83, the data also shows that 20% of recycling and general waste is being put in this bin over the three weeks. The reason for this may be as the bin is located in the canteen (site 1) as this site is also the most densely populated out of the five sites viewed with the canteen having an average population of 32 people as seen in figure 9.

Figure 8 results of bin usage in different locations over three weeks

However, team 7 were surprised to find that there was an anomaly in the data collected as bin 1 also located in the canteen (site 1) with bin 1 having an average of 2.67. when doing further analysation into this anomaly team 7 came to the conclusion that due to the location of where bin 1 is compared to both bin 2 and 3, its understandable why bin 1 is not used very often. It was also unexpected to find that bin 4 located on the second floor (site 3) did not have the lowest average over the three weeks with an average of 3.5, as one of the hypotheses to our investigation was that depending on the higher the population density was in an area, it would correlate will the bin being fuller and since site 3 had an average of 4.3 people meaning that site 3 had the lowest population density as seen by figure 9.

Figure 9 population at each site over three weeks

As seen from figure 10 the stacked column graph fluctuates with plastic varying the most with the range of plastics being 54% with bin 4 in week one having the highest rate of plastic disposal with a percentage of 72% and bin 5 on week 1 having the lowest with a percentage of 18%. Whereas paper had the lowest range with a range of 42% with the highest percentage being 50% from bin 1 on week 1 and the lowest being 8% from bin 5 on week 1. However, this did not come as a surprise for team 7 as when there were very few recyclable objects made out of paper although it was unexpected to see both bin 4 5 which are located in the library to have the lowest paper disposal due to the fact that the library is where paper is most commonly located. In terms of overall disposal rate cardboard was the material was deposited into the bins the most with an average of 4.42. This may be due to the material is found I packaging for many coffee machines and also from the stirring sticks, secondly when it comes to cardboard ‘’Its high-tech construction ensures the material can carry a wide range of weights, protects against moisture and provides sustainable packaging solutions. Furthermore, corrugated cardboard is highly customizable and very cost-effective’’ (Packaging Innovation 2014); due to hot food being served in these cardboard containers it is further suited for this packaging. Plastics were the second most used material with an average of 3.92, the main plastics that team 7 found were Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) plastics which came in a number of plastic water and soft drink bottles, plastic was also largely found in plastic cutlery which is a very positive as these materials are correctly being deposited in the right fashion.