A new campaign (1) (launch) earlier this year by the UK government which aims to reduce the amount of domestic waste. Households (2) (encourage) to recycle certain waste products and to sort and prepare others for collection at specific sites. From there they (3) (take) to special waste treatment plants where special machinery will process them for reuse as recycled material.
In Britain today, when the contents of the average household dustbin (4) (analyse), we find that, in terms of weight, 35 % of the total (5) (compose) of paper and cardboard, 22% of kitchen waste, 12% of plastics with glass, dust and ashes each representing a further 10 %.
There are in fact only a few items of domestic waste that cannot (6) (recycle). One common example is disposable nappies which, as their name suggests, (7) (design) to be thrown away after use. However, a lot of progress could (8) (make) to reduce the amount of kitchen waste most of which can (9) (transform) into a useful garden fertilizer. Indeed, if more people chose to do this then the weight of the average dustbin (10) (reduce) quite significantly.
In terms of glass products, the situation is more encouraging as nearly 20 % of all the glass that (11) (use) every year in the country (12) (take) back for recycling.
Nonetheless, it is clear that the mountains of domestic waste will only decrease if efforts (13) (make) both by individual households and local government authorities. Special equipment such as collect ion trucks must (14) (purchase) and people must (15) (make) aware of how they can contribute to improving the situation. This (16) (achieve) with increasing success in a number of regions in Europe during the last few years, a trend that (17) (expect) to continue in the future.