In the battle to recycle more and reduce the size of its landfills the United Kingdom has unearthed a plethora of potential moral issues when it comes to the environment. The United Kingdom lags behind most of the recycling and landfill goals set out by its own government as well as the European Union. This has led to the Government and local councils trying to come up with the best possible solutions to reducing waste. Local schemes have been rolled out successfully by councils all over the United Kingdom, but in this process new questions have arisen which pose ethical questions about the disposal of waste.
A recent scheme rolled out by Coventry Council offered additional recycling bins to households in its communities. The scheme has been a major success so far as more than double the predicted amount was collected in the first week. Now that communities around the United Kingdom are recycling at a much higher rate the question of what to do with certain materials has become a challenging one. The council promotes the recycling of plastic bottles, but says that certain types of plastic are easier and greener to just burn, or to send off to China for recycling.
Plastic has long been sent to China for recycling where cheap labor makes it a much more profitable business. However, some are questioning whether or not it is ethical for the United Kingdom to dump its garbage on the third world, and whether or not it makes a larger carbon footprint to ship refuse to China. Some claim that recycling can easily be placed on empty ships returning to China after bringing goods to Britain.
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