Globally, collection services are being reduced because of social distancing, staff absences and concerns about workers’ health and safety. This is affecting the collection, sorting, processing and treatment of wastes as well as markets for materials made from recycling and composts.In the UK alone, 46 per cent of recycling facilities have reduced or stopped treatment.
In the UK, this has resulted in a 300 per cent increase in reported fly-tipping in rural communities. Items that could have been reused via donation to charity are being disposed of unnecessarily. The US plastic recycling industry has asked congress for a US$1 billion bailout “to meet the demands of this crisis”.
But many countries are now in the process of transitioning to a future management system based on the “circular economy”, where the aim is to reuse and return all waste material to manufacturers as a resource.Some countries, and sectors, are further ahead than others in this process, and have managed to embed recovery and return into their design, such as deposit return schemes for bottles. But this is a gradual transition and at present the world economy is still more linear than circular.
In a fully circular economy, these extraction methods may no longer exist, or be limited in size. And the reduction in availability of recycled materials would reduce the rate at which the economy would recover through material supply issues.