European Week for Waste Reduction encourages to reduce, reuse and recycle
The European Week for Waste Reduction (EWWR) encourages concrete action to promote sustainable consumption and conservation of natural resources. With up to one third of all food ending up as waste, the 2024 campaign theme places a special focus on reduction of food waste. When mixed with plastics or carton, leftover food or other decomposing material in packaging makes it more difficult to efficiently recycle the material.
Bio waste is most useful when collected separately
When food leftovers and obvious biowaste end up at Syklo’s sorting plants, they reduce the recycling potential of materials processed there.
“It is difficult to salvage wet cardboard and turn it into a new raw material or even recovered fuel,” says Syklo’s Circular Economy Manager Heikki Harju-Autti.
Any biomaterials mixed with plastics or corrugated cardboard prevent further processing entirely when, for instance, salt in the food increases the chlorine content in the materials. In such cases, the packaging material is only good for mass burn incineration. This could be avoided with more careful recycling.
“The more plastics, cardboard and other recyclable materials our Syklo Oulu and Hyvinkää sorting plants receive, the better they are reprocessed for use in their future recycling routes. This is why it is important to recycle biowaste separately, too.”
Think like a pioneer x 3
To change our thinking and our consumer habits, key messages for the theme week organised by the European Week for Waste Reduction (EWWR) come down to reducing waste, reusing products and recycling materials.
1. Avoid buying new
New materials always produce new waste, even if a product is manufactured from responsibly recycled plastic. It is estimated that the world will consume resources in the equivalent of three earth-sized planets by 2050, with annual waste expected to increase by 70%. Changing our approach to consumption is a sustainable decision for the future. This means avoiding using new products and only buying for actual need.
2. Reuse
Single-use products drive overconsumption. By electing to borrow or rent tools and other such items or buy them second hand, you make a conscious choice as a consumer to make an environmental impact that is significantly smaller than if you bought new products manufactured from virgin materials. A responsible manufacturer looks for solutions where the life cycle of materials can extend beyond their initial lifetime.
For instance, recycled plastic pellets can be reused as raw materials up to ten times. Glass and metal are also highly recyclable, conserving our shared natural resources and reducing overconsumption.
3. Recycle
Recycling waste is always a better option than final disposal. In the circular economy model, waste is something that can be reused several times as a raw material for new products. Fractions of waste can be efficiently recycled when they are sorted in their dedicated bins or containers and kept separate. Syklo takes in items such as plastic pipes, plaster boards and roofing felt which, once processed by us, continue their way to our partners and their next life cycles.
Our modern plant in Oulu is capable of separating various fractions from mixed waste, but this extra process consumes more energy at the process line than sorting waste at the source.
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Our circular economy experts are actively researching new solutions for material flows generated by businesses to help recycle them efficiently.
Don’t hesitate to contact us! Together we can promote sustainability goals and create added value for your business from circular economy.