Asked by Baroness Neville-Rolfe To ask Her Majesty’s
Government what plans they have to issue guidance to local
authorities clarifying what can and cannot be recycled. The
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment,
Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Gardiner of Kimble) (Con) My
Lords, we are committed to achieving higher...Request free trial
Asked by
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To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to
issue guidance to local authorities clarifying what can and
cannot be recycled.
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for
Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Gardiner of
Kimble) (Con)
My Lords, we are committed to achieving higher recycling
rates. In May this year, the Waste and Resources Action
Programme, WRAP, published updated guidelines for local
authorities on what can and what cannot be recycled. I
shall be placing a copy in the Library of the House. With
WRAP and the waste industry, we are working to ensure that
more is recyclable. Information on what householders can
recycle locally is available on the Recycle Now website.
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(Con)
Does my noble friend the Minister recognise the frustration
of consumers, who despite the good work to which he has
referred are frequently confused about what is recyclable
and by the variations in the rules and indeed even in the
colours of the bins in local areas? Will he do his best to
simplify the system further into a single set of clear
rules for what is recycled and what is not? For example, I
believe black plastic of any kind wrecks the recycling.
Will he initiate a public information campaign using social
media to bring about a step change in recycling, both among
consumers and in business?
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My Lords, I entirely agree with my noble friend that we
need to encourage clarity. Indeed, that is what WRAP’s
consistency framework is intended to achieve. It is of
course for local authorities, in consultation with
residents, to determine the most appropriate arrangements,
but the recycling guidelines already make clear what is
recyclable and what is not. The Recycle Now campaign uses
social and digital media. Work is ongoing to address the
issue of black plastic.
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(Lab)
My Lords, what about plastic bottles?
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My Lords, there has been considerable success in the rate
of recycling of plastic bottles. But what I think the noble
Lord might be alluding to is that as part of the litter
strategy, for which I have established a working group, we
are going to look at a number of measures to improve
recycling. One of them is to have a full and proper look at
the impacts and benefits of different types of deposit and
reward-and-return schemes for drinks. We want to set up
that group very shortly and I am looking forward to its
report early in the new year.
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(Con)
My Lords, is my noble friend aware of the way in which
illegal landfill sites are being identified by new satellite
technology, and will he make sure that the most use is made
of this technology?
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My Lords, we need to use every new or modern system we can.
Fly-tipping in particular is a huge point—it is disgraceful.
I think there are about 628,000 instances, with household
waste as well. We need to ensure that we have the right level
of fines and custodial sentences. That move might be extreme
for some, but the level of fines needs to be as high as it
can be. Indeed, a company was fined £23,400 last week for
fly-tipping in Epping Forest.
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(LD)
My Lords, according to WRAP’s annual tracker survey,
two-thirds of households say that they are unsure how to
correctly dispose of items. Does the Minister agree that
significant cuts to local authority communication budgets
driven by central government cuts are contributing to falling
household recycling rates?
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My Lords, it is far too simplistic to suggest that. For
instance, in Richmondshire District Council, there was a
14.7% increase in recycling rates in one year; in Tameside, a
7.8% increase; and in East Riding, an 8.6% increase. This is
all about increasing the amount that is recycled and
separating food waste. Of course there are financial
conditions, but I suggest that there are many good examples
of what local authorities are doing in stressful times.
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(CB)
My Lords, could something be done about the covering of
magazines, which is currently not recyclable?
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My Lords, one of the key areas of the packaging industry’s
work and what we need to do with WRAP is to ensure that we do
not package unnecessarily and that packaging is recyclable.
There are some good statistics on that—increasing packaging
to 60% recyclable—but more needs to be done.
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(Lab)
Can the Minister help me? At home, we rigorously sort out all
our waste for collection, but sometimes we have too much and
I have to take it down to the tip. I take stuff that I have
rigorously separated according to the instructions of Bromley
Council, but when I get to the tip, I have to throw it all in
the same container.
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My Lords, I will take that point back because that is—I think
I will use the word disappointing. That is not what is
intended by the whole thrust of getting to a circular economy
of reusing and recovering much more. That defeats the object,
and there is value in a lot of the materials that we are
recycling.
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(Con)
My Lords, can my noble friend tell the House the variety of
recycling rates in different local authorities?
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My Lords, this is intriguing, because in South Oxfordshire,
for example, it is 66.6% and in the London Borough of Newham,
it is 14.7%. One issue that my colleague Thérèse Coffey is
dealing with is that many councils in urban areas of all
political persuasions are finding recycling much more of a
challenge, so we need to work on that.
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(Lab)
My Lords, we need to be realistic about the overall recycling
rates. The fact is that in England, recycling levels are
falling according to the latest WRAP figures. We are now in
danger of not even meeting the 50% recycling target by 2020
in England. When we talked about this before, the Minister
agreed that we could learn a great deal from the Welsh
Government, where rates are already at 63% and rising: they
are going up in Wales and down in England. What lessons has
he taken from the Welsh Government about how we could improve
things in England?
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It is certainly important that we learn from where there are
good examples. I referred to good examples in England; there
are indeed good examples in Wales. We need to listen and
learn from them. In Wales, a single blueprint is published;
in England, there are three suggestions in the consistency
document. This is all about how much we mingle—I gather that
that is the word—recyclable produce. In some areas, it is
easier to mingle it all and in others it is easier to
separate it. The problem with that is that you might get five
bins or you might get three. That is the issue that we need
to wrestle with.
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(GP)
My Lords—
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(Con)
My Lords—
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The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Evans of Bowes Park)
(Con)
My Lords, we will hear from the representative of the Greens.
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My Lords, I applaud the noble Baroness for bringing this up;
it is obviously a hot topic that we all care about. As a
Green, one of the big things for me is that far too much goes
to incineration. Can the Minister say, hand on heart, that
for this Government, incineration is the absolutely last
resort for waste of any kind?
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My Lords, the last resort is landfill, which we are
absolutely determined to work on. Obviously, some
incineration is the generation of power. In fact, whether it
is anaerobic digestion of food waste or use of an
incinerator, if we are clever about it, we can use those
resources to our advantage. But we need to recycle more.
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