And, councillor Gary Porter, who took over from Cllr Paul Bettison as chair of the group in September 2009 (see letsrecycle.com story), told letsrecycle.com that the LGA was already lobbying the Conservative's environment team “as hard” as it was the government about its key priorities in the lead up to next year's General Election.
The whole battle with recycling is a very small step by step war, we can't make massive changes
Cllr Gary Porter, chair, LGA environment board
Cllr Porter, who has been leader of South Holland district council in Lincolnshire for six years, highlighted the importance of European discussions taking place about the implementation of the revised Waste Framework Directive and asked: “Whether our government is strong enough to take on the EU to shape policy?”
He said he was “hopeful but not confident” that Defra would be as strong as he hoped, in particular in relation to clarifying the situation with regards how green waste is treated in the revised Directive, which must be implemented in the UK by December 12, 2010.
Concerns have been raised over both whether green waste will count towards the 50% household recycling target the UK will be expected to meet by 2020, and, in particular, whether waste treated using anaerobic digestion counts towards the goal (see letsrecycle.com story).
Highlighting other areas of policy that government should concentrate on, Cllr Porter said: “We need better national infrastructure for dealing with recycling, much better communications campaigns from central government, some of the adverts have been great, but they're not punchy.”
He added: “Those are the issues which government should concentrate on, the big national priority stuff.”
Cllr Porter explained that there was “huge” cross-party consensus on the LGA Environment Board that “councils know best” when it came to decisions about how services on the ground.
Pre-Budget Report
Commenting in the wake of last week's Pre-Budget Report stating that cuts to waste and recycling services would be needed as the government looked to reduce its spending on local government (see letsrecycle.com story), Cllr Porter questioned whether councils could make their services much more efficient than they already were.
He said: “There's going to be areas where councils are going to be able to drive more efficiency, in particular in relation to senior positions, but on the ground they're already efficient.”
And, while acknowledging that “budgets are tight and they're going to get tighter”, he stressed that waste and recycling would still sit “at the top” of councils' priorities” and noted that “it sits right at the top end of public satisfaction”.
Landfill tax
Cllr Porter also explained that the LGA's battle to get landfill tax returned by the Treasury to councils to help fund infrastructure was still very much at the top of his priorities, despite the current budgetary constraints on government, and claimed that: “Just because we haven't won doesn't mean we should stop fighting,”
“It needs to be put on the radar of any potential government,” he added. “We're lobbying the Conservative shadow team as hard as we're lobbying the current government.”
He also noted that efforts to persuade retailers to reduce the amount of packaging they used also remained a key issue for the LGA, highlighting that the lead-up to Christmas was an ideal time for supermarkets to consider just how much packaging they used and whether it was necessary.
However, he acknowledged that in many of the areas the LGA was campaigning on, and in waste and recycling in general, massive sudden change was unlikely.
“The whole battle with recycling is a very small step by step war, we can't make massive changes,” he said.
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