The United Nations summit on climate change was a failure by most accounts even though it did succeed in increasing awareness about the issues. Even though many countries left the meetings with a bad taste in their mouths as leaders were unable to come up with a binding resolution, they did leave knowing that change was going to be put on the shoulders of individual nations, councils, and people, as the world leaders cannot be counted on to save us. This led to the UK reevaluating it own recycling goals and making them stiffer.Currently the United Kingdom is in the middle of the pack of Europe when it comes to recycling. This may all be about to change as an recent announcement by Environment Minister Dan Norris revealed a plan to set new packaging recycling targets over the next few months that will launch the United Kingdom into the upper echelon of European recycling.
The new targets will be set for the years 2011-2012 and Dan Norris says that the new target should be to recycle at least seventy five percent of all packaging. Mr. Norris also said that he wanted to see more schemes and action from the producers of packaging so that less is produced in the first place. Several retailers spoke up to remind the group that food waste often contributes three times more waste to landfills than does packaging and that new targets needed to address this problem as well. This has led to a number of politicians speaking out against food waste as well.
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