Rubbish Statistics

An infographic in an article in yesterday's Metro presents the following 'facts':

1. The average waste per person in England has fallen... to 263 kg per person per year in 2010/11.

2. During 2010, regulated waste facilities in England and Wales managed nearly 140m tonnes of waste

OK, glossing over the England-England & Wales-UK distinction:

From 1, 263 kg x 62 million people = 16 million tonnes of waste. So where do the other 124 million tonnes come from to get to the 140 million tonnes in 2?

As a reality check, we have our black dustbin emptied fortnightly with about 50 kg of rubbish in it each time, there are four of us, so that makes 312 kg each.

3. More than 40% of household waste was recycled in England in 2010/11. 50% of local authority collected waste was sent to landfill in 2010/11.

As well as the black bin, we generate probably about twice as much in recycling stuff (mainly newspapers, but also cans, bottles and plastic). So the 263 kg seems very much on the low side, and I'd guess we 'recycle' two-thirds of our waste by weight, considerably more than the 40% figure mentioned in 3. In reality, we do no such thing as recycling of course, we just separate it out nicely, which is futile as our local council does 'co-mingling', but hey, whether it really gets recycled later on, I do not know.

312 kg x 3 = 1 tonne each, times 62 million people gets us to 62 million tonnes a year, I suppose it's possible that there's as much again in industrial waste and from earthworks and construction, which might get us to the 140 million tonnes. But it's not like rocks, bricks, wood, sand and soil are in any way dangerous or harmful, you just chuck them back whence they came.

5. Every minute, 1m plastic bags are used

1 million x 60 x 24 x 365.25 = 526 billion, divide that by 62 million people means eight thousand plastic bags a year, two dozen a day, which is clearly nonsense. Maybe they mean for the entire world, which would be one-and-a-half each per week, which is perfectly plausible, probably on the low side though.

6. It takes 1,000 years for one plastic bad to completely degrade

That's quite simply not true, depending on how you define 'completely'. Or else, where are these umpteen quadzillions of plastic bags we've used over the past fifty years? Largely rotted away, that's where.

7. Each year, we generate 290m tonnes of waste

So is it 290 million or 140 million (from 2)?

8. About 2bn steel cans are recycled in Britain each year.

2,000 million cans ÷ 62 million people = 32 each per year, seems very much on the low side, but not completely unreasonable.

And so on - if the figures they quote completely contradict each other and you have to compare and contrast and do reality checks on each one, then this completely defeats the point of the exercise. I would assume that some of their figures are correct (a painted clock is right twice a day), but which ones?