Green Alliance: landfill bans would create jobs’

In a document published today (March 24) titled More jobs, less carbon: why we need landfill bans, the Alliance claimed that landfill bans could help stimulate better collection systems underpinning investment in infrastructure.

The organisation claims that as many as 16,100 jobs could be created by banning plastics from landfill, 12,100 through a ban on food waste, 9,500 jobs would be created via a ban for waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE), 6,600 for textiles and 3,200 for wood.

These would include jobs in industries including anaerobic digestion, textile recycling, panelboard, plastics and electronics manufacturing.

Writing in the report, Dustin Benton, head of resources at the Green Alliance, said: The UK puts at least 3.8 billion of resources in landfill each year. Keeping these resources out of landfill would support skilled jobs and cut the UKs carbon emissions.

Remaking old products requires skilled labour for disassembly, fault finding and repair. High quality recycling is a sophisticated industrial process, requiring engineering and technical skills.

Selling the products created through reuse, remanufacturing and recycling generates profit, justifying the labour required to process them. In contrast, landfill just has a labour cost. Landfill is easy, but it makes no sense economically.

Quality

The organisation also claims that landfill bans, coupled with better collection systems to ensure that a high quality of material is collected and investment in new reprocessing and remanufacturing infrastructure, would help to secure more skilled jobs and value from the UKs resources.

Mr Benton added: Landfill bans help stimulate better collection systems and economies of scale, underpinning infrastructure investment. Scotland, Austria, Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands and several US states have already introduced them. It is time the UK did too.

Despite support from the Green Alliance and other industry figures, the government has already ruled out a ban on sending biodegradable waste to landfill, with Defra minister Dan Rogerson telling letsrecycle.com that he did not believe that it would be practical to do so in England (see letsrecycle.com story).

A ban on sending wood waste to landfill has also been ruled out by the government after concerns were raised that the measure would lead to additional costs for wood recyclers and doubts over the practicalities of the proposal were raised in a consultation (see letsrecycle.com story).