Restricting Plastics,

[43rdRecceReg]

If you google 'UK's rubbish shipped abroad', or with similar search terms you'll find lots of evidence that the rubbish we so carefully sort into a rainbow coloured assortment of wheelie bins and crates, is actually shipped to India, China and elsewhere- even when it's avowed destination is a recycling centre, or a UK landfill. We even ship rubbish to the EU, and they- as a riposte, perhaps- dump tons of rules, complex legislation, bureaucratic guidelines, absurd legal judgments, and bills upon us.
Quite a proportion of our waste (and I'm sure we're not alone in this) doesn't reach it's intended recycling centre, or destination country. It's often dumped on beaches, or tipped into the oceans by unscrupulous middle men (oops..Middlepersons). UK addresses and company details have been found on some of this human detritus. But then, there's probably evidence of garbage from all countries out there. The Great Garbage Patch in the Pacific is apparently the size of Mexico; and growing..... Still, in time you won't need to fly across the Pacific; no, it'll be possible to walk across it
Time to put 'Greenpeace' decals on our tanks boys, instead of black crosses and stars.... maybe we could build some tanks out of recycled ABS. Thus sporting this admirable
mission statement:- "This Tiger 1 is made of recycled and sustainable plastic"...
Here are just a few links generated by the search term above.

https://www.politico.eu/article/after-b ... the-trash/
https://www.theguardian.com/society/200 ... ment.china
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/7668178.stm

[RobW]

We do, we just don't shout about it much. They're also unpopular with NIMBY's because you need to take rubbish in, and if run badly can produce dioxins/furans.

http://www.suwic.group.shef.ac.uk/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheffield_ERF

[RobW]

Pretty much it's a question of capacity: we didn't build many because we have/had open cast mines to chuck rubbish into.

We're also researching pyrolisers & gasifiers to turn the waste into syngas and then into liquid fuels. The problem there is getting rid of all the metals and acidic compounds without it costing too much.