Speaking at their annual conference in Brighton, Malcolm Bruce, Liberal Democrat Shadow Environment Secretary and Sue Doughty, the 'Zero Waste' campaigning Guildford MP said that the government needs to be held to account for its 'fa;iling' waste policy.
Speaking to party delegates at his speech yesterday, Malcolm Bruce said: “The EU needs a collective approach to solving this problem and helping to design minimum waste into products and packaging. But our government appears to be the sulky child, standing in the corner of the EU party.”
He went on: “Liberal Democrats wherever possible should be setting the pace – promoting waste reduction, recycling and where unavoidable the most benign forms of disposal.”
Sue Doughty, who has been campaigning on the Zero Waste ticket since trouble over an incinerator in her Guildford constituency, said: “As a party, we do need to do more to co-ordinate ourselves on waste. We need a much more united front on waste – councillors on the ground are finding it difficult to make progress.”
Speaking to letsrecycle.com before a fringe debate on Zero Waste at the Brighton conference today, Ms Doughty said: “The government is still failing in its waste targets – we are set in the ways of the last century on waste disposal and technology. We need to take a radical look at waste, to regard it not as a discarded material but as a resource to be made available again.”
Policy
Although 'Zero Waste' is not currently official party policy, according to one of Malcolm Bruce's advisors on the environment and transport issues, internal discussions involving people like Sue Doughty are leading to the spread of Zero Waste ambitions to Liberal Democrat councillors around the country. Officially, Liberal Democrat policy pledges bottle banks in every neighbourhood and high taxes placed on the landfilling of waste.
Despite Sue Doughty's firm anti-incineration stance, the Liberal Democrats as a party are not anti-incineration. During the debate on Zero Waste, Ms Doughty said that waste was increasingly becoming a politicised issue, and public concerns over incineration couldn't be ignored.
“Waste management is now getting very politicised,” she said. “In my election, the people of Guildford decided to change the mix because of the incinerator. In Sheffield we narrowly lost because we failed to recognise that waste was such an important issue.”
Ms Doughty went on to say that pressure needs to be put on the government to stop dealing with waste “behind closed doors”, to open it up to others in Parliament and to use expert advice more readily when legislation was being formulated in the European Parliament.
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