As the new year is now nearly a month old, it is time for countries to start evaluating their efforts towards recycling and waste management. Since the United Kingdom was unable to reach many of the European Union’s directives about diverting more waste from landfills and increasing recycling rates, the UK has to take a hard look at its policies to ensure that they are being implemented in the most effective way possible. This has led to the strategies of the British government, specifically Defra, being highly scrutinized to make sure that nothing is being overlooked and that schemes are having their desired effect. The Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs committee, which is a cross party committee, recently took at look at some of Defra’s schemes and had some criticism about their effectiveness.
EFRA claimed that one of the reasons that Defra’s waste strategies are not working as well as they should is that there is too much focus on household waste and not enough on business waste. Currently household waste accounts for less than ten percent of the three hundred and thirty million tonnes of waste that are produced in Britain every year. The committee said that Defra was largely ignoring business and industrial waste even though it accounts for most of the waste produced in the UK. The committee was especially critical of the fact that Defra was using statistics which were compiled in 2002 as the basis for its strategies on business waste. The committee said that Defra must urge companies to take a whole new approach to waste, including collecting it to be used as energy.
|
|
