Abstract.

All local Government Authorities in the United Kingdom are required to collect and dispose of Domestic refuse. About 15 million tons are collected annually, about 90% of which is tipped and covered over: most of the remainder being incinerated (a small amount – less than ½ % - being composted).

Although the former method of disposal often serves a useful purpose in that material is provided for landfill operations, present trends would seem to indicate that this is an extravagant use of such a potentially valuable commodity. Similarly with incineration; few plants have provision for recovering the heat produced during combustion or for reclaiming the valuable materials in the incinerator feed or discharge.

There is a possibility that if present trends in consumption (qualitatively as well as quantitatively) continue, readily recoverable stocks of those materials which are at present necessary to the industrially-based mode of life of most countries will become unavailable to them. Yet, this research reveals that: despite a huge import bill for metals, over a million tons of metal are discharged in Domestic Refuse every year in the UK alone; the Nation’s bill for imported wood pulp is over £200 million, yet waste-paper with a potential value of about £50 million is buried or burned alongside other household ‘rubbish’; and while over 2 million tonnes of fertilizer are imported annually at a cost of nearly £17 million, at the same time about 2½ million tonnes of vegetable and putrescible material – which could possibly be composted and returned to the land – are thrown away as household waste. Further, most of the Local Authorities which burn household refuse do not recover the heat evolved yet crude oil imports alone incurred a massive bill, to be settled by the Country, of £1,338 million in 1973.

The detail of the research is principally concerned with those problems connected with Domestic Refuse today and how these could better be approached – in particular, the more widespread adoption of recycling and the economic, social and technological factors involved with its achievement. However, as these factors are only a part of the general overall problem, they are necessarily presented in this wider context: the effects of economic and industrial development upon the social and physical environment; growth-based on the “indiscriminate” use of finite natural resources; the creation of waste and the present trend of expanding output through ‘planned obsolescence’ and ‘artificial stimuli’. Therefore, a consideration of policy issues which touch on this subject are also addressed. For the sake of completeness, the research also includes a brief history of domestic refuse.