The proposal was announced alongside the party’s environment package unveiled today on green taxes. But, despite current thinking that reducing landfill will help reduce global warming the Lib Dems appeared not to think that waste disposal methods were linked to global warming.
” It has been a long standing party policy to restructure landfill tax to make it a waste tax “
– Chris Huhne, Liberal Democrats
The green taxes plans do not specifically include any proposals relating to waste because it does not “necessarily relate to climate change”, shadow environment secretary Chris Huhne said. Instead, he said that these proposals “focus overwhelmingly on climate change”.
But at the launch Mr Huhne told letsrecycle.com: “It has been a long standing party policy to restructure landfill tax to make it a waste tax.
“This would apply to waste put through an incinerator as well. That way there will be a relation to bear on greater recycling,” he added.
The Liberal Democrats have been openly opposed to incineration, but there are currently more than 30 plants being planned in the UK to burn waste.
A number of contractors working for local authorities are proposing the plants in order to help meet landfill diversion targets.
The Liberal's green tax proposals are intended to cut the taxes paid on “good things like wages” and move them to”bad things such as carbon emissions”. The party has said that the intention is to change the way people think about the environment rather than necessarily being a fund-raising solution.
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