ReallyRecycle.com | Closing Municipal Waste Gaps

ReallyRecycle.com is an upcoming recycle bag service we're putting together for the experienced sustainability community, schools and ethical micro-businesses to recycle plastics your council won't take and introduce circularity into their communities.

Upcoming changes to the Environment Act will make it mandatory for councils to collect and recycle plastics that are otherwise would not recycled now. Yet, councils are tied into contracts which regard those plastics as contaminants. Making it impossible for them to adapt.

Council plastic recyclers are also frustrated because these plastics contaminate PET bottles which are the most valuable. Reducing the quality of the resulting plastic batches and lowering the prices. Enough contaminates and it has to be incinerated or dumped in landfill. Which costs recyclers money.

This has left residents extremely frustrated. "Wishcycling" hasn't worked and needs a brand new way to think about these extraneous materials.

Why send us plastic?

The reason we ask you to post the plastic to us is actually due to the way local authorities and public sector buy service and appoint waste recycling firms.

Bar one particular case in London, douncils don't do any recycling themselves. The public sector procure waste collectors/recyclers exactly the same way they procure builders, marketing companies, IT firms, consultancy etc. Almost always through a tender process.

The main issue is that the contracts formed between the appointed waste recycler and the council, create exclusivity arrangements between the councils and supplier. The council is not allowed to have a separate supplier collect residential waste nor is it allowed to shorten the contract without being successfully sued for millions of pounds. The entirety of the value of both the contracts AND the downstream waste value.

This leaves councils hamstrung. They cannot easily change existing contracts to allow innovative processes and in any case, won't collect the waste that we collect, even if they could collect it. As it violates the contracts they have with waste collectors and legal action becomes a risk.

Yet, council recyclers would probably welcome less contaminated lorry loads if it makes them money per tonne downstream. Automedi and ReallyRecycle.com is that cleaner. Working for councils to close the loop and reintroduce manufacturing, while working with waste recyclers to sort waste of contaminating plastics before they need to process it.

Is there a way round?

There are two key ways round the problems cities have:

1. Ask residents/consumers to send us their plastic waste. We then turn it into products via our vending machines and virtual factories. Doing it this way, it is not waste that the council has (it only becomes council waste when it goes into your recycle bin and in practise, only when it's collected)
2. Councils have to wait for a major change in the law from Westminster (into national statute books) to legally force councils to engage the services of another party. Because existing contracts in civil/commercial law, cannot override statute going forward.

Note, climate change won't wait for statute.

Option 1 has fallen out of favour as the sustainability movement don't want the burden to shift to consumers over councils. While this is broadly correct, it still requires some residential action, encourages status quo support and leaves more damage to happen.

Option 2, is a delay in the process. The UK isn't moving fast enough to change this and the solution will likely be a renegotiation of contract terms, not a removal of the existing contract. So the waste collector after will be the waste collector before. Whether they're doing it right or not.

The Danger of Delay

To put this in context, the UK should be hitting all SGDs including Carbon Neutrality, by 2030, not 2050. 20505 is way too late. However, some cities have a waste recycling contract signed in 2001, but lasts for 35 years. So it alone won't finish until 2036. Such cities cannot manifest upcoming changes to the Environment Act because incumbent waste recyclers are under no incentive nor obligation to change until the contract is up for renewal (it'll likely be tendered by 2035 but contract variations may happen in the interim)

Councils don't pay us, for the same reasons as above. They legally are not allowed to. Which is why we currently have to charge customers themselves. That makes it quite an exclusive process though. You have to be able to afford to buy the bin. We would rather have ReallyRecycle.com paid for by councils, but it's not possible.

This is why ReallyRecycle.com does what it does. We are getting round the constraints of the waste process in a legal way.

To offset courier emissions we do a lot of regenerative work to rewild particular areas. Each bag has a component that covers a proportion of that.

One possibility is if each area could form a recycling charity of community interest company. There would be national and even crowdfunding sources of cash available to pay for that process. That is a huge ask though and not one we'd expect any community to take on.

Another possibility is enough businesses pay for commercial waste collection from us, that provides capacity for us to run a consumer waste arm for free. That's currently nowhere near possible. Since business still doesn't understand nor commit to change, even if they say they want to and that our products save them money as a system.

How does it save CO2?

Take this set of hat hooks:

If you were a council, a business or a person, you could pay ￡5 for 10, when you might only need 3 and it will be made out of 120g of virgin plastic. The yoghurt pots you (or businesses or councils) normally dispose of, are burnt or landfilled. Total of 1.4kg of CO2e for this pack of hooks and 240g of waste plastic (100g of plastic for the coat hooks you have not used and 140g for the yoghurt pots), which is 7 pots.

With our system, these hat hooks are made from 100% recycled plastic. Instead of throwing those yoghurt pots into landfill, we recycle them into the filament and then make those hat hooks at a fraction of the energy. There is only the original 140g of of plastic instead of 240g and that is recycled, not new. In addition, we expend 20g of CO2 instead of 1,400g (1.4kg) which is a huge Carbon saving. Because products and waste collection subsidise each other, the more of each happens, the cheaper it gets. Councils in particular have a huge opportunity turn huge amount of value from it, as it makes products, parts, accessories and more, for free!

The rate of change of the climate is a huge issue for all of civilisation. As is often the case, organisations forget there are no contracts on dead planets, with no jurisdictions. There isn't time to wait for contracts to lapse. Since society would never catch up.

Want to be the first to know about ReallyRecycle.com? Check out ReallyRecycle.com and get your first bag from Gasqet.com