Government agencies have been tasked with looking into the ways in which the United Kingdom can become greener. The UK has been under fire over recent months after it was revealed that it would fail to meet many of the environmental objectives outlined by the European Union. The EU set specific guidelines and goals for all of its member nations to reduce waste and to increase their rates of recycling. The United Kingdom has been getting better, likely due to an overwhelming number of schemes launched by agencies and local councils to increase awareness about environmental issues, as well as incentivize green behavior. Recently a scheme was launched which hopes to help the recycling of glass around the United Kingdom.
The first targets for recycling involving the carbon footprint of reprocessing will be introduced in the United Kingdom as soon as 2011. Defra, the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs proposed to set differentiated targets for glass recycling based on the process that will be used. Targets for businesses would be established by whether or not the material was introduced into an open or closed loop process. Some ways of reprocessing glass have carbon savings while others do not. Sending glass for remelting saves about .3 tonnes of CO2 per tonne of glass recycled, while glass sent for aggregates has no savings in carbon.
This could very well change the ways in which local councils decide to collect glass, as Defra plans to incentivize the collection of glass that will be sent for remelting.
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