LAWR

INDUSTRY OPINION Horror stories t seems that 'shock, horror' headlines about recycling appear with alarming regularity in some of England's newspapers. There was the Daily Mail's: "Recycling: the great con trick – how your carefully sorted waste is being dumped abroad." And more recently the Sunday Express weighed in with: "Scandal as 280,000 tonnes of recycling ends up as landfill". Over the last couple of years I've used the press regulator to persuade papers to withdraw or amend these and other misleading articles about recycling – you may have read about some of these cases in the recycling media (see box opposite). However, these wins come weeks or months after the article has been published, and even a prominent correction won't have the same impact 10 Local Authority Waste & Recycling July 2015 I industry tend to forget how confusing it is for the man on the street. We deal with a complex and multifaceted industrial process, filled with arcane terminology and debates, and which has changed dramatically in the course of the last 20 years. If people are puzzled, it isn't necessarily their fault. Let's examine some of the myths that need demystifying. Looking back over the stories I have dealt with, there seem to be three big misconceptions that underlie them. Number 1: "There's no point recycling, it all just goes to the same tip." This thought comes up in various forms, whether based on what someone once heard the bin man say, misunderstandings about what MRF rejects are, or dim recollections that from time to time councils have struggled to find buyers for their recycling. I think on the public consciousness as a front page, anti-recycling splash. Since good news is rarely as newsworthy as bad, the damage caused by these inaccurate stories is difficult to offset. Increasing public enthusiasm for recycling is more important now than ever. Local authority recycling rates in England are plateauing with the UK still well short of its EU target of 50% recycling by 2020. Meanwhile, austerity is limiting the resources that councils can give to improving recycling performance – only service improvements that quickly pay their way are up for consideration. Some are even turning to measures such as charging for garden waste collections that may set recycling rates back. We need the public to want to recycle if further progress is to be made. Many of the anti-recycling stories that I've dealt with have arisen at least in part because the journalists involved didn't understand what they were writing about. While some of the misunderstanding seems to verge on the wilful, those of us within the resources The journalists involved didn't understand what they were writing about Correcting inaccurate articles in national and local press can take months. Peter Jones says it's time to strike back against the tabloid recycling myths. News analysis. Jones has found three big misconceptions that underlie most of the problematic stories. Long haul. Correcting inaccurate stories can takes weeks, if not months, but often the damage is already done.

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