2011

Zero waste or zero ambition - has the Waste Review delivered?
21 June 2011

After a year long and expensive consultation the Government's finally published a disappointing new waste policy for England.

We've led the call for a goal to halve household 'black bag' waste by 2020, with a similar ambition for business.

However businesses, councils and green groups are disappointed at the lack of any new goals or targets, ideas and ambition.

The new policy won't help deliver the 'zero waste economy' the Government claims it's aiming for.

The good news

The new policy includes:

No return to weekly rubbish collections
- which would reduce recycling rates.
Support for anaerobic digestion
- a great renewable source of energy from food waste.

Recycled policies

However in other areas, the policy is embarrassingly vague and unambitious.

Caroline Spelman said we have to go 'further and faster' on recycling than the previous Government.

But many of the plans announced are similar to those of the last Government. Or they had originally been scrapped by the Coalition and are now being reconsidered:

higher packaging recovery targets
- the Government stalled the annual rise of the targets last year
consulting on a landfill restriction on wood waste
- the Government rejected the last year's consultation supporting restrictions
a voluntary commitment for councils on waste services
- 111 councils are already signed up to such an agreement, forged in 2009.

And unfortunately, the household waste recycling target is still only 50%.

This is the EU legal minimum that the last Government was considering raising. Wales, Scotland and most recently Northern Ireland have pledged to go further.

The Government has spent a year reviewing its approach to rubbish - at vast public expense - and all it's managed to do is reduce its ambition, recycle old ideas and dump its commitment to a zero waste economy.

Julian Kirby, Friends of the Earth waste campaigner