Landfill waste reduction welcomed but more must be done

Today's announcement that every local authority in Wales has met the limit on the amount of compostable waste sent to landfill sites has been welcomed by Friends of the Earth Cymru. The environmental pressure group warns, though, that much more must be done to raise the recycling and composting rate to levels reached by many European countries.

Friends of the Earth Cymru spokesperson, Gordon James, said:

"We welcome today's announcement. This is indicative of the improvements that have been made in the percentage of municipal waste that is being recycled or composted by local authorities in Wales . This has increased from 7% when the Welsh Assembly was formed to over 18% last year [1].

Despite this achievement, Wales still has a long way to go to catch up with many other European countries. Holland, Austria, Belgium and Germany, for instance, already recycle over 50% of their municipal waste [2].

We believe that in order to achieve these much higher rates, the Welsh Assembly Government should ensure that local authorities provide all households in Wales with good doorstep recycling and composting facilities
and that people are well informed of the issues.

Once this has been done, the Welsh Assembly Government should consider introducing charges for rubbish that is thrown out to be dumped in landfill sites. It recently announced, in its Environment Strategy Action Plan, that it was considering introducing waste charges such as these. The UK government is also considering a similar proposal.

This is not a new idea. Our European neighbours have shown that where charges are commonplace recycling rates rise significantly. People would not pay more overall as these charges would replace the waste charges in council taxes.

As we have seen recently in Wrexham, any proposals for new landfill sites trigger strong local opposition. If we are to avoid establishing new landfill sites or incinerators, both of which are hugely unpopular, we have to continue to significantly increase recycling rates."