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Posts Tagged ‘Waste’

Recycling attitudes – permanent or passing?

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Spotted some interesting figures on consumer attitudes towards recycling thanks to an article by Liz Gyeke at Materials Recycling Week.

According to Defra’s ‘2009 Survey of public attitudes and behaviours towards the environment’ there has been a significant shift in public attitudes towards recycling with 91% stating that they prefer to ‘recycle items rather than throwing them away’. This is a big improvement on the 70% that was achieved the last time this question was asked in 2007.

In addition 56% of people interviewed as part of the research stated that they ‘always recycle’ with a further 19% recycling ‘very often’ and 11% ‘quite often’. More revealingly 88% of respondents agree with the statement that ‘people have a duty to recycle’ – up by 10 points from 78% in 2007.

Whilst much change in the recycling and waste industry has been driven by legislative pressure from Westimister and Brussels the survey seems to indicate that general public attitudes seem to be ‘catching up’ with developments in the industry. There has always been an extremely active ‘green’ lobby but on the evidence of this survey many of their views have been adopted by the mainstream.

It is interesting to speculate about the reasons for this recycling attitude change. No doubt some of it is due to PR ‘education campaigns’ funded by organisations such as WRAP and local authorities keen to reduce their landfill tax burden by persuading their residents to opt in and participate. The recession will also have played its part in changing attitudes as people think more carefully about what they are consuming and throwing out.  And, of course, deeper concerns about the state of our environment will also have had an impact.

On the basis of this survey there certainly seems to be a much larger enthusiasm for recycling than the impression you may get from reading the Daily Mail – but is this simply a sign of the times or a real ingrained change in public attitudes? Is it safe to assume the battle to persuade people to  recycle has been won?

Source: Materials Recycling Week

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Share this N. Dologhan, 29th September 2009

Energy from waste facility rejected

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According to Letsrecycle.com East Lothian Councillors have rejected planning permission for a new Energy from Waste facility – despite the proposed facility being described as the ‘best practical environmental option’ by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency and local Planning Officers recommending its approval.

The decision to turn down applications can be a risky for Councillors, particularly when their Planning Officers have already recommended approval. Council taxpayers can end up paying significant costs (upwards of £100,000) if the developer chooses to appeal the decision and can demonstrate at the public inquiry that they were put to unreasonable or unnecessary expense and delay.

While opposed residents living in the vicinity of such facilities may be perfectly happy for the Local Authority to shoulder such costs in an attempt to block development progress, Councillors have to remain aware of their responsibilities to local taxpayers across a much wider area. The position of a Councillor on a planning committee can be a difficult one as they have to balance a political ‘need’ to represent resident views with the requirement to ensure their decisions are reflective of planning law.

This can be complicated further when local Councillors are often members of political parties who may, at least at national level, be advocating such developments as part of their broader energy and waste strategies. For example the Conservatives recently published an Energy Policy Paper which highlights the importance of Energy from Waste as part of a decentralised energy generation system.

Balancing residents’ views with their legislated responsibilities as planners and then reconciling this with the national ‘party’ line can be quite the juggling act for local Councillors – and it doesn’t always work…

Source: Letsrecycle.com

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Share this N. Dologhan, 2nd September 2009

Taxing issues…

The Policy Exchange, a centre right think tank, has just launched a report entitled:

A Wasted Opportunity: Getting the most out of Britain’s Bins

The report, drafted by Professor Chris Coggins and Robert McIlveen recommends the radical overhaul of the UK’s waste system to reduce the cost on households, improve recycling rates, increase local authority efficiency and expand the proportion of the UK’s energy needs met through waste.

Interestingly, the report also recommends that landfill tax should be reformed into a broader waste tax covering all disposal processes in line with the waste hierarchy.  The report states: “By introducing taxation on incineration a clear preference is signalled to reduce, reuse, recycle or compost where possible. To limit uncertainty, escalating rates should be set over a long enough period to encourage investment.”

waste_hierarchy

The Policy Exchange’s view is that the Government should set a tax and regulatory regime which clearly establishes preferences over how waste is treated, with the highest rate for the least preferred option, landfill. Once established this framework will allow the private sector to plan long term investments in technologies that reflect the Government’s preferred approach.

There is no doubt that escalating Landfill Tax has resulted in the successful development of more sustainable waste management technologies and this proposal seems like a logical extention to it.

However, as with all new taxes, the devil will be in the detail. In particular, it will be difficult to get the taxation bands right as the relative advantages and disadvantages of the various technologies are still being debated. Technology providers will have to get involved in this debate  and justify the relative benefits of their technologies, or run the risk that their option is taxed at levels which make them significantly less attractive to invest in.

Whatever technological options prove to be favoured under a revised waste taxation system, the fact remains that new facilities will still have to be consented and built – and no one wants to live next door to a waste facility – no matter how far up the waste heirarchy it is!

Source: Policy Exchange

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Share this N. Dologhan, 21st July 2009

Packaging power…

Making the most of Packaging - DEFRA report

DEFRA has recently launched ‘Making the most of packaging’ a strategy document focused on packaging and packaging waste.

As you would expect the report highlights the need to reduce the amount of packaging waste ending up in landfill. Packaging contributes substantially to household waste and the  EU Waste Framework Directive requires Member States to recycle 50% of household waste by 2020.

‘Making the most of packaging’ focuses on two main areas of potential improvement – the optimisation of packaging and packaging recycling. The strategy seeks to reduce the overall environmental impact of packaging by reducing the total amount of packaging used, switching to materials with lesser carbon impacts, switching to returnable or re-usable packaging systems, increasing levels of recycled content, increasing recycling and recovery, and improving the carbon-efficiency of recovery processes such as incineration.

This document is yet another example of legislative pressure driving change in the waste management and recycling industry which is, in turn, driving the need for new facilities to hit these targets. While the majority of the population may be in favour of increased reuse, recycling and energy recovery, few want to live next door to such facilities.

This leaves it up to people like us to put these facilities into context, win the arguements and help our waste industry clients get these facilities built.

Source: DEFRA

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Share this admin, 1st July 2009

The importance of images…

Coca-Cola have teamed up with Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) to to install recycle zones around the UK, making it easier for people to recycle their cans and bottles in places like shopping centres, theme parks, airports, university campuses and at outdoor events.

To promote the scheme the company commissioned artist Robert Bradford, production designer Paul Cross and aerial photographer Jason Hawkes to create an artwork consisting of 200,000 used drinks cans at Beachy Head in Sussex.

The 50 metre sculpture, entitled ‘Precious Metal’, took one week to create and can only be viewed fully from the air.

While PR stunts like this can be pricey, the old adage that an image is worth a thousand words certainly holds true!

Good images can really make or break a story.

Source: Norwich Evening News

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Share this admin, 1st July 2009

Scary compost…

The national press have been doing a little scaremongering about open air composting according to a recent Let’s Recycle report.

Articles in both the Sunday Telegraph and Daily Mail cited work carried out by the Environment Agency and Cranfield University, entitled “Evaluating the quality of bioaerosol risk assessments for composting facilities in England and Wales”. The report was published in April 2009, which found that out of 44 composting sites surveyed, only eight had adequate risk assessments in place to prevent bioaerosols posing a risk to the surrounding area.

While bioaerosols do pose a risk to human health its is also fair to say that the restrictions placed on open air composting facilities are pretty stringent. These include the requirement for specific risk assessments if the facility is closer than 250 metres to homes or workplaces.

Of course residents living in the vicinity of such facilities may not be aware of the strict regulation of these sites, so no doubt articles like this will ring alarm bells and cause problems during planning applications. From our perspective this simply reinforces the importance of  developing and maintaining good community relations with local residents and stakeholders.

Source: Lets’ Recycle

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Share this admin, 30th June 2009