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Tag: recycling activities

Communicating data

18th July 2017 Posted by

The importance of science in our daily lives is taken for granted these days – no one would gainsay the impressive advances we have made these past two generations, in all aspects of life. But along with technological prowess we are paying an environmental price for the lifestyles we have come to expect and enjoy – pollution, waste, loss of

England’s recycling rate is flatlining

23rd October 2015 Posted by

The news that Birmingham City Council (BCC) has not only missed its 2014/15 household waste recycling target of 35 per cent by six percentage points, but has also downgraded its 2015/16 target from 35 per cent to 30 per cent highlights many of the concerns SUEZ and others in the waste management sector have expressed to the new government. Firstly,

Resources Minister Dan Rogerson unmoved by plea from Shadow Minister and EAC

5th December 2014 Posted by

Following Defra’s proposal to levy a five pence charge on single use plastic bags (see previous blog: Bag policy should be binned), the Environmental Audit Committee’s comments on this policy were debated in the House of Commons last week. Chair Joan Walley reiterated the Committee’s conclusion that Defra’s proposals were “unnecessarily complicated” and that, in persisting with exemptions for biodegradable

MEPs push for the Circular Economy Package

18th November 2014 Posted by

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

The EAC and EFRA reports give Defra and the next Government a useful route map

3rd November 2014 Posted by

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

EFRA Committee reports on state of waste management in England

24th October 2014 Posted by

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

If young people are disengaged, whose problem is that?

17th October 2014 Posted by

The headline from a recent YouGov poll examining public attitudes towards recycling was that Britain’s so-called Facebook generation (youth aged 18-24) “are the most apathetic generation when it comes to recycling waste”. Apparently only 57 per cent of 18-24 year olds admitted to being committed recyclers, with 71 per cent thinking recycling was not their personal responsibility. In contrast, the

Make the ‘inner loop’ of reuse the first priority

17th June 2014 Posted by

In articulating what a circular economy should look like, the latest thinking is that it is not just about recycling, where end-of-use articles and products are destroyed in order to recover the materials contained in them. There is a so-called ‘inner loop’ of reuse that should be prioritised first. Products that have come to the end of their ‘first’ life

The shift in the business population reduces the size of the commercial waste market in the UK

6th May 2014 Posted by

Demographic changes in the UK have occurred not just in the general population, but also in the business population. These changes make interesting reading in terms of the future prospects for waste and resource management. Latest figures published by the Department for Business Innovation & Skills in October 2013 estimated that there were 4.9 million private sector businesses in the

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