At a speech to the Environment Agency's annual meeting today, Margaret Beckett said that behavioural changes taken so far to help tackle climate change were “just the tip of the iceberg”.
The Secretary of State told an audience in Birmingham that environmental leadership would be central to Defra's next five-year strategy, set to be launched next month. Part of this would involve “catalysing” businesses to change their behaviours and adopt best practice on waste minimisation, which “could save between 2-3billion each year.”
She said: “The best businesses recognise that they can maximise their long-term returns to shareholders by minimising their negative environment impacts; that through responsible action they can become more competitive, not less.
“The Government has been successful in providing catalysts for behaviour changes. By working in partnership with business, we have shown that fairly simple changes in business practices can produce substantial reductions in costs and environmental impacts.”
Mrs Becket said that advice from government-funded programme Envirowise was already helping businesses to make savings “in the order of 1,000 per employee”.
Landfill Tax return
As she did at the Labour Party Conference last month, the Secretary of State also said she would be announcing a package of measures “shortly” to return Landfill Tax revenues back to businesses. Mrs Beckett said about 284 million would be made available over three years to support “business that specifically targets waste minimisation, diversion away from landfill and a marked improvement in resource efficiency.”
Up to 20 million a year would be used to fund a Technology Strategy aimed at waste minimisation and energy efficiency, she revealed. And, she added that there would be a “new enhanced capital allowance scheme” to target waste and resource efficiency technologies.
Retailers were issued a challenge by Mrs Beckett to only sell products “that minimise environmental damage in their production and use”.
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