Recycling in New Zealand is “essentially a fraud” and food scraps diversion from landfills is “subsidised greenwashing”, a landfill expert tells BusinessDesk.
Waste Management chemical engineer Timothy Brake said “we can’t recycle our way out of the climate crisis”.
He said only a small fraction of our rubbish is recycled, and when it is, it’s often a mere delay to it ending in landfills, shedding microplastics in the environment in the process, he said.
Recycling a plastic drink bottle into meat trays, for example, he says delays the disposal of the plastic from the drink bottle by about a couple of weeks.
“We haven’t solved any of our problems by delaying the process.
”Recycling in the circular economy is essentially a fraud. And there is no point in removing food scraps from modern landfill, generating extra carbon emissions through its transport to sometimes remote facilities,” Brake argues.
Food will “rot away to nothing” in landfill, he says, with each tonne generating 0.3-megawatt hours of sustainable electricity.
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