Dan I agree with you on your points. Residents who live in Daventry recycle approximately 44% of their household waste. The Daventry recycling scheme has been popular with residents and is seen by Government as being highly efficient against a national average of 13% of household waste currently being recycled. Meanwhile some local authorities across the Midlands are recycling less than 5% of household waste. Recycling levels are far higher across the EU than they are in the UK. A lot depends on how innovative the local authority is in selling the benefits to householders. Households within Daventry are given one red box for paper and textiles, one blue box for cans, glass and some plastics, one brown bin for garden waste and cardboard and a normal bin for all other waste. Daventry council provides 4 receptacles to store household waste, 3 more receptacles than would normally be provided under other councils. All these receptacles have an associated cost and take up space. The cost of running the Daventry recycling scheme is an estimated £56 per household per year compared to approximately £26.00 per household, per year for conventional household waste collection. Hounslow council does not provide conventional household bins or wheelie bins but will provide a green box for recycling. The cost per household for waste collection throughout the borough was £26.96 per household in 2002/3, set to almost double in the period 2006/7. The cost of managing household waste is recovered through Council Tax from those residents who pay the charge.In London and the South East less than half the local authorities currently recycle certain types of plastics due in part to logistical transportation issues caused by government and EU directives. Local authorities are set targets for recycling based on tonnage. With very few processing plants in the UK where plastics can be recycled, loads have to be transported over a considerable distance. A lorry load of glass or paper is far heavier than a lorry load of plastics, which are generally light, and bulky, so the tonnage is lost as is the incentive for local authorities to recycle plastics. The usual excuse given by local authorities for not picking up plastics for recycling is that a market cannot be found for plastics. Reprocessing companies may specialise in certain types of plastic meaning that the local authority would have to sort differing types of plastics at their expense. Nearly all forms of plastics can be recycled, even lower grade products such as carrier bags which have a high ink content, these can be recycled into black rubbish sacks yet waste processors simply can’t get enough plastic to recycle. This state of affairs results in the UK importing hundreds of thousands of tonnes a year unnecessarily. Ireland had the right idea in reducing the impact of certain types of plastics by imposing a tax on carrier bags under which retailers charge for carrier bags, equivalent to about 10p per bag. Local authorities are working to improve recycling services, in large part because they are being forced to do so by government and EU legislation. Under the EU Landfill Directive fines could be as high as half a million pounds a day if the UK does not act to reduce the level of waste buried in landfill sites by 2010. Gordon Brown increased the Landfill tax level in 2003 by 23% from £13.00 to £16.00 a metric tonne, this was in addition to the year on year increases, to reduce the level of waste buried in landfill sites. Under EU legislation the UK will have to ensure that less than a third of its waste is buried in landfill sites by 2020. The UK currently sends about 70% of its waste to landfill sites. It has been estimated that of the 70 million tonnes of waste buried in landfill sites each year almost 13 million tonnes consists of materials delivered to building sites only to be discarded later as surplus to requirements. The average UK household produces roughly a tonne of waste a year. About 80% of it is suitable for recycling or composting. However, household waste is also suitable for energy from waste processing. Waste management is probably the biggest problem we face after climate change. We also face an energy crisis so turning waste into energy seems a sensible route to go down, if only the political will could be balanced between environmental and economic objectives. Modern waste processing plants provide valuable energy from waste. There are no flames and no incineration under this clean technology. These plants are capable of providing electricity and green bioethanal road fuel. Some household waste products such as the Tetra Pak containers typically used for fruit juices and cereal packets along with washing-up powder boxes contain a mix of paper and plastic which cannot be separated and is, for the moment, non-recyclable other than through energy from waste processing. Substantial resource levels are being made available to local authorities in order to reduce the impact on landfill sites and provide recycling schemes. In November 2002, Leicester City Council awarded a £300m contract to Biffa Waste Services to meet waste management targets. Biffa Waste Services are now responsible for the collection, recycling and disposal of Leicester's waste for the next 25 years. The government are to provide a total of £30m under a Private Finance Initiative (PFI) to cover the council's capital costs. Biffa Waste Services will develop the facilities with Leicester City Council paying Biffa Waste Services an annual fee. In Hampshire in 2002, the French owned waste management company Onyx in partnership with the local authority waste services under the banner of Project Integra, admitted that it had dumped hundreds of tonnes of recyclable waste in landfill sites because Project Integra management had under estimated capacity levels for several months leaving truckloads of material being sent off to landfill sites instead of being recycled as intended. If local authorities fail to meet waste minimisation targets, they face the very real prospect of fines being imposed upon them. The government and the EU have made substantial resource levels available to these authorities to enable waste minimisation targets to be achieved. It is now up to these local authorities to make the best use of the resources they have been allocated. I hope that they do because if Daventry can achieve a 44% level while certain other local authorities across the Midlands are recycling less than 5% something is obviously wrong. Which more or less brings us back to the original point, in that if these local authorities fail to set up suitable recycling schemes which both meet or exceed the need of householders and meet or exceed waste minimisation targets, should the very same local authorities be in a position to impose fines upon householders for the local authorities failure to meet these targets?
Gareth Evans ● 7412d