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Where do you put the rubbish?
Excerpt: I have just been reading the National Audit Office report on Reducing the reliance on landfill in England.
I have just been reading the National Audit Office report on Reducing the reliance on landfill in England.
It´s the usual page-turner (hmmm...) and hardly cheeful reading. The UK puts much more into landfill than any other Member State except for Greece. This is not great news for the environment. what is more it means the UK faces the prosepct of EU fines of up to €260 million per annum.
If I were faced with this negotiation I think I would argue that the ban of feeding swill to pigs, results in a different situation from that expected when the targets were set.
The easiest way to comply would be to have more incinerators (energy from waste schemes). But these provoke an enormous NIMBY reaction in the UK.
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"The UK puts much more into landfill than any other Member State except for Greece. This is not great use for the environment."
It is much better than shipping stuff halfway round the world to be recycled (or more likely landfilled elsewhere). Should we ship green glass to France to be recycled there? There is no market for it it in the UK. Is this a sensible use of scarce resources?
The problmem with recycling is that there are subtle questions of economics to be addressed but the debate in this country tends to be along the lines of "recycling good, landfill bad". I don't suppose this will change at any time in the near future.
I agree with your last paragraph, your Grace.
But you are more or less agreeing with me, aren't you?
"Use" should have been "news" by the way (sorry about the cliche). I've now corrected.
Peter
Well, I don't know Peter. I was questioning your statement that all that landfill is bad (or at least not great) for the environment. For many, or even most objects, landfill may in fact be the best option.
I think excessive use of landfill is bad news.
Personally I am open to more incineration.
Peter
http://pigeon-post.blogspot.com/
This is why I'm annoyed with my local LibDems for going on a recycle-mantra crusade.
Sometimes its not the best option. Incineration makes a lot of sense, sometimes even the dreaded landfill is the best option.
There are cases when recycling makes no environmental sense (let alone economic sense).
Yes, mantra-driven decisions are the opposite of actually examining the environmental and cost consequences of any particular option.
I'm not a supporter of more incineration, it has negative effects on air quality, and urban air quality is one of the few environmental issues with clear known links to substantial poor health.
As for landfill - we are only running out of space in the sense that the landfills we have are filling up. And that land in the UK is not in great supply. We could open more landfills, if we found the land for them. The volume of waste in terms of pressure on land is insignificant compared to, say, the demand for housing, or most other uses.
If stuff is landfilled today, that may be useful in the future, there would be nothing stopping us digging it up again then. Recycling is not now or never. Of course if it is useful today, it is better to recycle it today.
On the other hand if there is no demand for something, then recycling it is pointless, and shipping it halfway round the world is - for bulk materials - absurd. So I would rather we focussed more recycling enthusiasm, somehow, on the demand side, rather than agonising over how much extra we should spend on separate rubbish collections. If the demand is there, supply will follow.