'Big step' needed on UK landfill

Jeremy Cooke, BBC News 12 Oct 09;

Standing in a huge hole in the ground which is slowly being filled with thousands of tonnes of stinking rubbish it's easy to see why landfill gets a bad press.

The site in Bury is one of dozens across the country - it is a giant sand quarry with a void in the middle which feels the size of a football stadium.

And all day, every day that void is being filled by a fleet of heavy lorries which dump rubbish into the path of a bulldozer which compacts it down to make way for the next load - 600,000 tonnes a year.

Landfill has never been pretty. But it has for decades been an effective way of dealing with waste. It is true that we are - as a nation - getting better. But the UK still dumps over half of its waste into landfill, compared with EU neighbours like Germany where the figure is about 1%.



The Environment Secretary, Hilary Benn, says it is time for a radical rethink: "We can't keep producing large amounts of rubbish and putting it in holes in the ground... it's producing greenhouse gases which are contributing to a problem we have to solve, we are throwing away things that have a value.

"We've been living in a 50-year bubble in which we thought we could throw away things without regard to the consequences. It's got to change."

There are already tough European rules - and fines - designed to dramatically cut the use of landfill. But now the government is calling together local authorities to tell them they must do more.

'Zero waste'

At a "waste summit" in London, Mr Benn will tell council leaders they' have done well to increase recycling from 8% to 37% in the past 12 years, but that another "big step" is needed.

Latest government figures say we in UK send more than half our waste to landfill. That is a huge 62 million tonnes a year in England alone. Now the aim is to reduce landfill by at least 50% over the next 10 years.

If the UK is going to achieve its new "mission statement" of becoming a "zero waste nation" it will need to see more investment on the scale adopted by the Greater Manchester Waste Disposal Agency.

It is ploughing an estimated £4.5bn into waste management over the next 25 years. The money is being used to build and run huge a variety of projects including composters for garden and food waste, anaerobic digesters to create energy from rubbish and huge recycling schemes.

The director of contract services, David Taylor, says it represents good value for money.

"We want to divert waste away from landfill and get as much value as we can from the waste we receive. That's being achieved through composting, recycling and through treatment of the residual waste," he says.

"We have a simple choice: we can do nothing but that will cost people considerably more that what it has cost to develop all these facilities."

Colour coding

But big recycling projects often rely on the goodwill and participation of individual households.

In Oldham for instance, rubbish has to be sorted into four separate bins, each of them colour coded: The black ones are for general waste, the big brown ones for plastic, glass and cans, the large green bins are for garden waste and the bucket-sized green ones are for food waste.

The government targets demand massive investment in recycling plants, composting facilities, anaerobic digesters and new-generation incinerators.

Margaret Eaton is chair of the local government association. She says big spending on waste management may be beyond some increasingly cash-strapped councils.

"The targets for 2013 and 2020 will be very difficult to achieve without better investment in recycling opportunities and facilities. It's easy to say spend more money. But Council tax is already stretched to the limit," she says.

"We need support and help from government through the tax they are already removing from local authorities. Local Authorities need that money back to invest in the system of recycling."

To achieve the government's aim of becoming a "zero waste nation" will demand a change of mindset -- rubbish needs to regarded as valuable resource rather than an expensive problem.

But observers say that ultimate success will mean waging a war on rubbish on all fronts - not just recycling but reducing the amount that we all throw away in the first place.

Rubbish rules 'to be tightened to cut landfill'
Householders could be forced to sort every last piece of rubbish that can be recycled, composted or incinerated under Government plans to reduce Britain’s landfill waste deposits.
Murray Wardrop, The Telegraph 12 Oct 09;

Ministers are proposing tightening rules on what people throw away in an attempt to move Britain towards becoming a zero waste nation.

Households that already separate rubbish into up to four bins could get even more, including slop buckets, to ensure that only waste with “absolutely no other use” goes to landfill.

The strategy is to be thrashed out at a waste summit attended by ministers, councils, businesses and waste experts on Tuesday aimed at ending the country’s throwaway culture.

Hilary Benn, the environment secretary, and John Denham, the communities and local government secretary, want to halve the amount of unrecycled waste by 2020.

At present, 55 per cent of household waste and 50 per cent of commercial and industrial waste is buried underground. A further 25 per cent of construction and demolition waste goes to landfill. In total, 62 million tons of rubbish goes to landfill each year.

Mr Benn will also draw up plans to generate electricity from waste, using technologies such as burning methane from food.

By 2020, he wants Britain to use 25 per cent of its household waste for generating power and 50 per cent for recycling, with only the remaining 25 per cent going to landfill.

Mr Benn said: "Why do we send valuable items like aluminium and food waste to landfill when we can turn them into new cans and renewable energy?

"We must now work together to build a zero waste nation – where we reduce the resources we use, reuse and recycle all that we can and only landfill things that have absolutely no other use."

The blueprint for future waste disposal is to be piloted in six areas – Brixton, Hoxton and Newham, all in London – plus schemes in Suffolk, Dorchester-on-Thames, Oxon, and Bishop’s Castle, Shrops. Each will be set reduction targets.

The government also hopes to implement measures to reduce packaging in shops such as encouraging firms to remove cellophane wrapping from fresh fruit and vegetables. Manufacturers would also be urged to use packaging that is easier to recycle.

Last month Mr Benn unveiled plans which could see households handed fines of up to £500 for failing to recycle food scraps using slop buckets.

One in four councils already collects food waste separately in order to reduce the amount of biodegradable rubbish being dumped in landfill.