Government package is not new waste strategy – Meacher

Mr Meacher told letsrecycle.com today (06/05/03) that the Strategy Unit report, which examined the government's success at meeting the Landfill Directive targets, and was published in November 2002, was a good report. But he said the government's response to the SU report, published today, would not replace Waste Strategy 2000. “A waste strategy does pretty clearly have certain requirements,” Mr Meacher said, pointing to the Waste Strategy 2000's aims of landfill reduction and increased recycling.

Of the government's response to the SU, he said: “It is not as if this is a fundamentally new revelation, but it's an adjustment and tweaking of some of the basic ideas, which is very useful. I wouldn't call it a new waste strategy thought; the Waste Strategy 2000 remains.”

Variable charging

Today's report seemed cautious on the subject of variable charging schemes for waste. Mr Meacher admitted the government wanted to look into possible problems in more depth. “We are saying that there needs to be further work done because there could be a problem in terms of equity because for example, low income households with several children will obviously create a lot of waste. We don’t' want there to be a conflict between social and environmental goals.”

There were also concerns about fly-tipping and avoidance of charging measures, he said. For this reason, the government intends to study the experiences of other countries which have some form of variable charging.

But Mr Meacher added that much of the interest in variable charging was coming from local authorities themselves. “Several local authorities have asked to do this as a pilot. We are not forcing them to,” he said. “They think it's a useful way of achieving waste minimisation.”

Batteries

The Minister also revealed that the government was keen to bring in a voluntary producer responsibility agreement for consumer batteries. “There is likely to be an EU Directive about battery recycling in the next few years and we should be up at the front and try to do things first,” he said.