18th November 2014
The new term of the European Commission has commenced with a Commission Work Programme (CWP) proposed by President Jean-Claude Juncker and First Vice President Franz Timmermans. As many waste-watchers suspected from President Juncker’s cool reception earlier, the Circular Economy Package introduced by outgoing Environment Commissioner Janez Potočnik has not received an unqualified green light in the draft CWP. The so-called
3rd November 2014
The Government’s response to the Environmental Audit Committee’s Inquiry Growing a Circular Economy: Ending the Throwaway Society contains the now-familiar mixture of mild ambition and platitudes that characterised its evidence before the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee’s Inquiry Waste Management in England. There, the Government was taken to task for ‘stepping back’ precisely at a time when vision, a
24th October 2014
Defra may have hoped that fences had been mended with the waste management sector since its now infamous letter last November, which announced that it would be “stepping back from areas where there was no sign of market failure”. However, those hopes must surely have been dashed by the publication of the House of Commons Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
14th January 2014
Two years ago, SITA UK published a document called ‘Driving Green Growth’ , which aimed to help Government understand the potential of the waste and resource recovery industry. We listed the potential opportunities, which included: Investment of £20-£25 billion 84,000 direct and indirect new jobs Millions of tonnes of resources recovered and reinserted into the economy A 10 per cent
21st May 2013
It’s not difficult to make the case to reduce, reuse and recycle waste – a point made by the Labour Party in the Resource Security* Policy Review, released on Friday 19 April 2013. It’s also not difficult to understand that recovering the maximum amount of energy from the waste left over is an obvious thing to do. However, neither point
23rd April 2012
It’s now widely accepted that a sustainable future is only achievable if we change our ways from a ‘throw away’ culture to one which recognises and extracts the value from the resources we consume. When I look at the waste management industry, I see only the enormous potential it has to help the UK, particularly in terms of renewable energy.
12th December 2011
HMRC released figures last month showing that some 45 million tonnes of waste is still going into landfill. We should still be pleased that the UK has come a long way in recent years. 45 million tonnes is still a significant drop from the halcyon days of landfilling back in 1996 where almost double this amount was buried. However, if
