Talking rubbish: Is recycling working?

By David Shukman Environment correspondent, BBC News

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Recycling - from bin to bulb

Dumped in landfill, or stockpiled unwanted: the fate of our recycling has triggered a wave of negative reports and doubts among the public.

The nagging question: is the effort of sorting our rubbish worth it?

In an effort to attempt to find an answer, I have travelled over the past few weeks to the less savoury corners of a world that most of us never see.

My journey took me from an ice-cold warehouse brimming with bundles of paper and plastic to conveyor belts laden with waste in Essex, to the stench of a vast shredding machine in Leicester.

Experts all agree on one thing: landfill is a thing of the past

My impression is of a young industry, occasionally faltering, often unpopular, but emerging as a normal - and generally useful - part of our lives.

Conversations in a suburb of Durham, on a drizzly collection day, revealed mixed feelings among householders: supportive of the principle of recycling but irritated, even angry, at the idea that their efforts may not be doing any good.

The worst suspicion? That a lot of carefully sorted recycling ends up in landfill.

Some does get dumped, no question, but I'm told it's only a small percentage and usually because it's contaminated, which means that it has not been cleaned properly or it's the wrong stuff.

And some is stockpiled. Indeed, just up the road in an old television factory on the edge of Durham was a small mountain of papers, plastic and tin; huge bales of recycling towering towards the ceiling. Some newspapers were dated from last October or even September.

Late last year, local recycling contractor Greencycle had found that the usual market for its material, China, was suddenly closed, and prices were tumbling.

Week after week, as at dozens of other sites around the country, the firm was gathering more recycling but could not shift it, so stockpiling was the only option.

Only now is the stuff being moved.

So does this mean the system is failing? Well, talking to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), the Environment Agency, government recycling agency Wrap, and several of the largest waste companies, it's clear the market slump has been a bad blow but the process as a whole is still functioning.

The long run

At the Shanks recycling centre in Barking, Essex, an intricate network of conveyor belts streamed out paper, plastic and metal.

Falling prices left many recycling firms with stockpiles of paper and plastic

Director Paul Dumpleton admitted that prices for material were poor but insisted that they were "in this for the long-term".

Companies like Shanks have invested huge sums in the machinery required for transporting and sorting recycling, and they expect to be busy with this task for decades.

So if it's a viable business for the contractors, or at least many of them, how do the economics stack up?

Wrap has figures ready to make the case:

• Recycled newsprint typically costs around