May 31st, 2013
by Dominic Hogg
It barely seems credible today to recall that in the late 1990s and early noughties there were people making policy – in what is now Defra, and the Environment Agency – who sincerely believed that it was incredibly challenging to meet a recycling target for household waste of 25%.
May 24th, 2013
As the father of two young children I am frequently reminded how early in life we develop a sense of what is fair, and (perhaps more intensely), what isn’t. One of my favourite methods of avoiding adjudicating on such matters is to step outside and busy myself with preparing materials for recycling. Given the nature of my work and my company’s culture, it will come as no surprise to hear that I am a pretty diligent recycler. Moreover, as far as I can, I try to prevent the generation of waste in the first place. The upshot is that the Sherrington family’s black bag waste is comprised almost entirely of plastic films and wraps.
April 12th, 2013
by Peter Jones
The Daily Mail ran an extraordinary story on its front page on 5th April, claiming that 12m tons (sic.) of material collected as household recycling is in fact being landfilled overseas. The article also reports that official statistics showing a recycling rate of 43% of household waste are overstated because “in reality, processors reject most recyclable material, which then often ends up in landfill sites.”
April 9th, 2013
There can have been few judgements in the administrative court more cut and dried than that given by Mr Justice Hickinbottom in Cardiff last month. In his decision regarding whether the revised Waste Framework Directive (rWFD) had been correctly transposed through the Waste (England and Wales) (Amendment) Regulations 2012, he saw little of merit in the case made by the claimants, a group of materials reprocessors. Finding in favour of Defra and the Welsh Government, he concluded:
March 4th, 2013
by Mike Brown
Sometimes it takes a really clear expression of the fundamentals of a point of view to help you see what’s wrong with it. A couple of weekends ago, BBC Radio 4’s Any Questions came to the Gloucester Guildhall. One of the hot local topics is the county council’s incinerator plan, and a number of its opponents were in the audience, and a question was raised about whether it was “a blot on the landscape or a necessary step to securing an ecologically sustainable environment”.
