by Michael Smith
Winning over the public and tackling non-municipal waste are the key challenges facing the UK as it battles to reduce the amount of waste it produces.
Regulating businesses can only work to a certain extent, but creating a real step change will require a significant change in consumer behaviour, so said Liz Parkes, head of waste at the Environment Agency.
The UK needs to make sure it is sending good quality, uncontaminated material for recycling, according to Ms Parkes.
Speaking at the RWM conference in Birmingham, she said that while great strides are being made to deal with municipal waste, 91% of the country's rubbish is not municipal waste, and more focus needs to be put on this.
According to Ms Parkes the challenge is to get the public involved and to look at consumer behavior and that there is no point pumping money into changes that are happening already that might give us one or two per cent more recycling.
When commenting on Defra's “Waste Strategy for England”, Ms Parkes reiterated her previous comments that although it was not a perfect strategy, it provided impetus for the industry.
Liz Parkes said that there was no need to aim for perfection but that the country as a whole needed to get moving on this. “We don't want this analysis paralysis," she said.
The quality of materials being sent for recycling will also be key to maintaining the confidence of the public and the customers for the materials, she added, and more work must be done to look at waste higher up the supply chain.
Some of her comments, like all the actions of this government when it comes to matters of recycling, are rather difficult to understand. How does Ms Parkes come to the conclusion that 91% of the country's rubbish is not municipal waste? Most people, and this includes me, would think that rubbish collected by the municipal waste collectors would be that, namely municipal waste. And is not most rubbish collected by the municipalities?
On the other hand certainly industry of all kinds probably creates more rubbish that offices, shops and households and much of the rubbish from industry is carted off by commercial non-municipality refuse collectors to the waste dumps, the landfills, the majority of which, however, are operated, if I am not mistaken, by the government in one way or the other.
Where we must start is, because we still have a great problem with rubbish being left where it should not end up, namely as fly tipped waste in the countryside, with educating the public and, most importantly, and I know I keep harping on about this, by giving people incentives, in a financial way, to bring their stuff to the recycling centers. Then we will get good, clean and uncontaminated materials for recycling.
We also must do the recycling in our own backyard, so to speak, and not ship it all off – unsorted – the China and other places. Doing it here would also create jobs at home. Something that would not be a bad idea with a recession knocking at the door. In fact, methinks, the recession actually has broken down the door and is in already.
Only, in my view, an scheme of financial incentives, like it is being done in other countries, e.g. the United States, will get the people on board here. It is being done elsewhere so it can be done in the UK.
Before any of that, however, we must get everyone on board to reduce and reuse. Here we also must go back-to-the-future, so to speak, and bring back the deposit on glass bottles, and I would add to that also glass jars, for glass can be reused ad infinitum, more or less until it finally breaks because of rough handling and then, and only then, should the glass be recycled into new glass or other products made from broken glass; never before.
Reduction must be made in plastic packaging and other packaging too. The current way of packing goods into sealed plastic and then sealing that yet again into a blister pack of hard plastic does not make any sense at all. Whatever is wrong with cardboard boxes that can be burned or composted or such. We used to be able to do that.
© M Smith (Veshengro), September 2008
<>
Participation of the public is 'key' to UK waste challenge
