The waste hierarchy, and why order matters
The waste hierarchy is the framework everything else hangs off, and the ranking is not arbitrary. Preventing waste is best, reuse next, then recycling, then energy recovery, then disposal. Each step down loses value.
The gap between reuse and recycling is far bigger than most people appreciate. A working washing machine re-homed keeps all the energy and material embedded in it. The same machine recycled recovers the steel and loses everything else — the manufacturing energy, the assembly, the functioning product.
So the honest test of an eco-friendly clearance is not the recycling rate. It is whether anything usable was pulled out before the load was tipped into a sorting line.
- 1. Prevention — don't create it
- 2. Reuse — keep it as it is
- 3. Recycling — recover the material
- 4. Recovery — energy from waste
- 5. Disposal — landfill, last resort
- Reuse beats recycling by a long way
Reading the claims
"We recycle 100%" is the claim to be sceptical of. Almost nothing is 100% recyclable, and what companies usually mean is that the load went to a facility rather than to landfill — which includes energy recovery, and energy recovery is not recycling.
"Zero to landfill" is a real and meaningful claim, but it says nothing about the split between material recycling and incineration. A load burned for energy is zero to landfill and still a long way down the hierarchy.
Ours is a diversion figure: over 80% of what we collect is diverted from landfill. We state it that way rather than claiming 100% because it is the number we can actually stand behind.
Ask us the five questions
We'll answer all of them — including the recycling-versus-energy split, which is the one that matters.
Five questions that separate real from greenwash
Where does my load physically go? A licensed transfer station should be nameable. Vagueness here is the single biggest signal.
What proportion is recycled versus recovered for energy? Anyone who genuinely sorts will know the difference and answer it. Anyone who does not will say "we recycle everything".
Do you separate reusable items before tipping? What is your SEPA carrier registration number? And will I get a duty of care (your legal responsibility for waste you produce) transfer note? Those last two are checkable in two minutes on a public register — ours is WCR/R/3002381. Our guide to choosing a licensed carrier covers why it matters legally as well as environmentally.
What actually happens to a sorted load
A mixed household load is not one material. Metal is pulled for recovery — steel and, more valuably, copper. Timber is graded, with clean timber going to panel board and treated timber to a restricted route. Plasterboard is separated because gypsum (the mineral inside plasterboard) in landfill conditions generates hydrogen sulphide.
Electricals go under WEEE (anything with a plug or a battery) rules with hazardous components removed before the metals are recovered. Textiles, furniture and bikes in usable condition go to reuse. Green waste is composted. Inert material — rubble, concrete, soil — is crushed into recycled aggregate.
What remains after all of that is genuinely residual, and it is a much smaller proportion than most people expect. The detail of the process is in what happens to your rubbish after collection.
