Following an interview with INCPEN director Jane Bickerstaffe on BBC Radio 4's Today programme on December 30, reports appeared in a number of national newspapers stating that “driving down to the bottle bank can do more harm than good “.
But, speaking to letsrecycle.com today, Ms Bickerstaffe said that her comments had not been taken in quite the way she had intended and insisted that INCPEN continues to encourage the recycling of packaging waste.
Ms Bickerstaffe said: “Of course we very much encourage recycling. But what I said was that we as a society should not be ignoring other environmental issues. We do encourage recycling, but we also believe more needs to be done in getting value back from waste that is not being recycled or cannot be recycled.”
Her real message was that the government is not doing enough to encourage the recovery of energy from waste in the UK, she said. The INCPEN director warned that local authorities were facing a “real dilemma” as to whether they should allow new incinerators to be built, but central government was not giving them any help.
Ms Bickerstaffe explained: “The government is hiding behind trivial things like pyrolysis and refusing to give a lead on the proven technology of energy-from waste incineration. If you look at other European countries, they have very high recycling rates but also very high incineration rates, as they are dealing with their waste in a properly integrated fashion.”
Unsuitable
Packaging companies obliged to pay for the recycling and recovery of packaging waste under the UK regulations are facing ever-higher recycling targets, the INCPEN director pointed out. By avoiding energy-from-waste, recycling targets would be so high that poor quality or contaminated material unsuitable for recycling would have to be recycled, though there would be no market for it.
She said: “In this country, people agonise over whether to recycle things like crisp packets and sweet wrappers when there are far more important things they could be doing environmentally. The best way to deal with bits of packaging like that is to burn it. There has to be a sensible amount of incineration in this country.”
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