Govt waste strategy rubbished
The government is making very little progress towards a “low-waste society”, MPs have said.
A report by the Commons’ environment, food and rural affairs committee says since its 2007 waste strategy the government has been “long on rhetoric but short on a detailed action plan”.
It says 90 per cent of waste does not have specific recycling targets, while there are no clear overall targets for the reduction of England’s “waste mountain”.
“Defra must give a clear lead on what it thinks the potential is for business to reduce its waste levels and increase its rates of recycling,” committee chairman Michael Jack said.
“At the same time it must encourage companies to take a completely new view of waste and see it as a valuable source of raw material which must not be squandered in these difficult economic times.”
The English throw away 330 million tonnes of rubbish each year but householders have raised their recycling targets to 37 per cent, according to the report.
It calls for the government to increase its recycling targets to 50 per cent by 2015 and 60 per cent by 2020 as a result.
MPs are calling on the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to implement to force retailers with a turnover greater than £50 million to publish their waste prevention strategies.
It wants spending cuts for business resource efficiency programmes to be re-evaluated and money for the enforcement of waste regulation to be increased.
And it wants to consider a small ‘clean-up’ levy on products like cigarettes, drinks and confectionery, whose packaging contributes the largest volumes of litter, to support work by local authorities to clean up their neighbourhoods.
Defra did not issue a response to the report before its official publication.
