Finally some haste with waste strategy

Environment Secretary David Miliband published a new strategy for cutting waste on 24 May 2007, and stated that everyone, including businesses, individuals, local authorities and the Government, have a crucial role to play in reducing the waste they produce. It is hoped the strategy, which was originally planned to be published in October 2006, will be an essential part of the drive to tackle climate change.

The main points of the waste strategy include:

• more effective incentives for individuals and businesses to recycle waste;
• a greater responsibility on businesses for the environmental impact of their products and operations;
• a strong emphasis on waste prevention with householders reducing their waste and business helping consumers. A new national target will help to measure this;
• a service so people can opt-out of receiving unaddressed and well as some addressed direct mail;
• a partnership between the Government and retailers for the end of free single use bags;
• a challenge to see recycling extended from the home and office and taken to public areas like shopping malls, train stations and cinema multiplexes;
• the potential banning of biodegradable and recyclable waste being put into landfill sites;
• an increase in the landfill tax escalator by £8 per year, from 2008 until at least 2010/11;
• increasing the amount of energy produced by a variety of energy from waste schemes, using waste that cannot be reused or recycled.

Speaking at the launch of the strategy, David Miliband said, "We need to not only recycle and reuse waste, but also prevent it in the first place. And there's a particular challenge for businesses to produce less waste with their products, so consumers have less of it to dispose of. The result will be a win for individuals, who will have a cleaner, safer local environment, while potentially saving money, and a win for the wider environment because it will reduce landfilled waste which contributes to climate change."