The Committee was responding to the latest report from the think tank Sustainability Northwest, which warned that the region was “drowning” in waste and needed a regional-level approach to recycling and waste management (see letsrecycle.com story).
LARAC said that while it “may have been true in the past that the North West was 'd;rowning in a sea of waste', we are definitely swimming against the tide”. Increased funding from Defra and partnership working between authorities was already having an effect on local authority recycling rates in the region, it said.
The Sustainability Northwest report, Sustainable Governance in England's Northwest, suggested that the area needed a “visionary regional waste strategy” to counter “confusion over disposal policies and the public's recycling apathy”.
But LARAC said such an approach would “restrict the flexibility of local authorities to innovate and take account of their local circumstances” and that to “simplify waste collection may not be the best way forward. LARAC said it understood the potential benefits of a regional approach to waste management, but warned that with a multitude of differences between collection authorities, “one size does not fit all”. LARAC said recycling needed to remain a local issue.
North west regional LARAC representative, Carole Taylor said: “The current two tier system of waste collection and disposal is not hindering improvements in recycling in the North West. For example, the Lancashire Waste Partnership (LWP) has had a waste strategy in place since April 2001 and their recycling rate for 2003/04 was 26%, already higher than next year's national target of 25%.”
One existing example of regional working was the North West Recycling Forum, LARAC said, which meets regularly to “share ideas, innovations and best practice from local authorities throughout the North West”. The Committee said this sort of “established forum” could be the type of organisation to take forward some of Sustainability Northwest's ideas.
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