Speaking to letsrecycle.com yesterday, the minister also appeared to take a swipe at local authorities who collect green waste, thereby threatening the home composting process.
Mr Meacher said: “It's a bit of a pity to extract it from the waste stream and take it to a waste transfer station and sort it there – it's not the ideal way of doing it. Home composting is a great way of cutting down on household waste.”
Revealing his thoughts after launching Real Nappy Week (see letsrecycle.com story), the minister said that DEFRA saw home composting as another vital waste minimisation measure that should be promoted, even if it doesn't count towards council targets.
He explained: “We're very much in favour of home composting, but sadly, it cannot count towards local authority targets, because you cannot verify it, you cannot tell how much is being composted. So it is a problem in terms of being able to bring it within the normal reuse/recycle/recover categories.”
He said he believed the worst thing local authorities could do would be to discourage residents from home composting in order to boost the results of green waste collections.
“There's nothing to stop local authorities from doing that,” he said, “But if this was to develop into a significant problem, then we would have to take action on it.”
In the run-up to the Animal By-Products Order coming into force on May 1, 2003, designed to deal with the possibility of spread disease via kitchen and catering waste, Mr Meacher admitted there have been some fears that this might affect home composting. But the minister made it clear that the Order “shouldn't stop home composting” and that new regulations being worked on by the government would go some way to encouraging home composting in the UK.
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