When I agreed to participate in the BBC’s recent One Show programme, it was with some trepidation. ‘Not another programme preying on the sensitivities of Daily Mail readers?’, I thought. Sure, it’s news but it’s not the sort of positive news that any of us in the ‘recycling world’ can ever feel too comfortable about being aired to the masses. But, following a chat with one of the show’s researchers, I was assured that they had a genuine interest in the lifecycle of resources and how ‘cradle to cradle’, and the bread and butter issues of collection, participation, quality, and reprocessing play out once the householders have done their bit. So where did it all go wrong?

I can only assume that the self-anointed ‘Minister for Bins’ rolled into town and The One Show became the Pickles Parade.

The resource and circular economy is a £23-billion opportunity for the UK. But we’re letting it go to waste (pardon the pun) in two main ways: firstly with consumer participation – by everyone not recycling everything they practically can; and secondly, and in my opinion more shamefully, by often allowing up to 10 per cent of what we do collect to still go to waste. Sure, these two items may be related, but I simply don’t buy the argument that says put it all in ‘one’ bin and you can recycle everything. No technology can do that yet.

The resource economy needs consistent, high-quality feedstock to get the maximum recovery of resources required to get the full environmental benefits from closed-loop (can-to-can, bottle-to-bottle, paper-to-paper) recycling systems. This all saves energy, resources, and carbon, which is supposed to be the overall goal.

The evidence is somewhat variable, but all UK reprocessors have a preference for materials that have been source separated to some degree – keeping glass separate from paper, even keeping glass out of mixed collection systems. But with fully co-mingled recycling systems, losing five per cent to landfill is considered ‘good’ practice. The average is more like 10 per cent. So one in 10 newspapers or cans that householders collect for recycling still goes to waste…

My own company reprocesses aluminium, and we know that reprocessing just one empty aluminium drink can saves enough energy to power a TV for three hours. So, if you are an average UK can consumer (one can a week), and your system is fully co-mingled, every year it will throw away the equivalent amount of energy needed to power your TV for 24 hours. You wouldn’t leave the TV on for 24 hours at home and not watch it!

So, the resource economy needs consistent high quality. It’s pretty obvious when you think about it that if you want high-quality plastic, high-quality aluminium, high-quality paper, etc, you don’t get it by combining all the materials selected by householders (and sometimes even compacting them on a collection truck) before trying to sort them out again.

But on my other theme, for good participation, our householders also need confidence and assurance that their actions are worthwhile. Last year, the Resource Association undertook a YouGov poll that told us that the majority (73 per cent) didn’t know exactly where the materials they put out for recycling go. The majority (65 per cent) also didn’t know what these materials were being made into. In both cases, the respondents said that more information would make them much more likely to recycle.

We only have to look to the recent issues with the food supply chain to see what can happen when industry loses focus and the impact that has on consumer confidence. Thereafter, the Resource Association launched a voluntary charter of End Destinations reporting, which so far has garnered over 80 signatories, of which more than 50 are local authorities.

It’s not for me to lecture on what makes for good quality in a supply chain, though you can see from the preceding words that I struggle not to. But what The One Show reaffirms in my mind is that whilst within the ‘recycling world’ we are becoming more mature in our engagement and collaborative working, the media is not interested. I saw a flicker of realisation in the eyes of the studio presenters that the Pickles Parade is largely puff politics and posturing built on supposed populist policies, but with little evidence. The presentation is always that one-bin systems are simpler than five bins, but that’s just patronising twaddle as even for a ‘single-bin’ system to work most effectively, it needs a separate food waste system, a separate residual waste collection, etc. But yet again the populist presentation distorts the agenda. I’d start praying for a reshuffle – but as the Minister for Bins is not even in the department with that portfolio, knowing my luck we’d get Michael Gove as a replacement!

So whilst I did contribute to the making of this programme, as you may have already surmised... I ended up on the cutting room floor. Maybe it was for the best for all concerned.

Andy Doran is Senior Manager for Sustainability & Recycling Development at Novelis Europe