The Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) consulted on increasing consistency in recycling collected from households, businesses and other organisations in England between May and July 2021 but has yet to publish its official response (see letsrecycle.com story).
On 29 November, letsrecycle.com spoke to Ms Cook, who took over from Carole Taylor as chair in January, to discuss her first year in her role and LARAC’s plans for 2023 (see letsrecycle.com story).
In a wide-ranging interview which also touched on extended producer responsibility for packaging and her work with ReLondon, Ms Cook expressed concerns about the impact of the delay on procurement.
She said: “Once the consistency response is available and the local authorities know exactly what’s expected of them, there’s then going to be a bit of a rush for everybody to change, so there’s going to be potentially a lot of bottlenecks in terms of purchasing, in terms of contracts.
“It’ll be a lot of work to do and I think the sooner it comes out, the better. It takes a lot of planning and a lot of procurement. Local authorities need to know as soon as possible so they can start to put that into place.”
Once Defra publishes its response, LARAC will run webinars and provide councils with advice, Ms Cook said. LARAC’s other priorities for 2023 include looking into launching a conference in Northern Ireland.
2022
Reflecting on a busy 2022, Ms Cook said it was “really, really nice” to find out what was going on across the different areas of the UK by providing support for councils.
She said her highlight of the year was chairing LARAC’s national conference at the Birmingham Hilton Metropole hotel in October (see letsrecycle.com story).
“I’ve been a LARAC member for many, many years prior to joining the exec and then becoming chair, so I’ve been on the other end where I’ve attended the conference for many years. It’s always been an excellent conference,” she said.
“To then go and chair it for two days was really exciting and slightly nervewracking, but just really interesting getting to meet everybody, hearing the presentations and also, I’ve got to say, giving out the awards.
“Local authorities are so busy. They’re doing their day-to-day job and then they’re doing all these extra projects.
“To be able to give out an award to a local authority who has worked really hard on something and support them and see their enthusiasm and excitement, that was a really nice evening.”
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