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14 Mar 2003 : Column 552—continued
Mr. David Drew (Stroud): I add my congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Joan Ruddock). As always, she is at the forefront of any environmental move. The Bill is an important staging post that in a sense brings together the environment with the economics. Neither can be looked at in isolation.
I will be quite brief because much has already been said, and try to cover a couple of areas that have not been covered. The simple fact is that this measure is not just good green politics; it is also environmentally sound. The Environment, Transport and Regional Affairs Committee, of which I am a member, has established some clear ground rules. Some 70 per cent. of municipal waste is deemed organic and, if so, it can be recycled. If it is organic, it is the most likely cause of methane, so sticking it in the ground is creating problems for the future.
I am aware that the Government—through their excellent report "Waste Not, Want Not" and the work of the waste and resources action programme—are trying to grapple with these difficult issues and I hope that the Bill will help.
The Committee also considered the rate of growth, which the hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mr. Sayeed) mentioned. Much of the increase is due to the changing nature of society. I am grateful to the packaging industry, which has identified two clear statistics. First, a person living alone has roughly double the environmental impact of a person living in a larger household. In addition, one person in a large household uses 60 per cent. of the materials and 40 per cent. of the energy used by a person living alone. That is a clear example of the environmental impact of moving towards single-person households.
A fortnight ago, the Committee visited Denmark, which is one of the leading advocates of a different approach to dealing with waste. It believes that incineration is part of the solution and, interestingly, has more problems in encouraging people to live closer to landfill than incinerators. However, that is cultural. Denmark is beginning to understand that incineration comes at a cost, as does landfill.
I do not want to pre-empt the report, but we talked to Government spokesmen, local government officials, councillors and local communities. We visited a small community in the municipality of Copenhagen and we saw waste stations that put us to shame.
There are six principles or canons of recycling, starting with the obvious one; Denmark has a much more punitive tax regime, allied to economic incentives. It has a hierarchy of recycling that discriminates most against landfill, but incineration is not much lower. Denmark gives positive incentives to recycling. The second point is that Denmark is not afraid to use regulation to encourage a different approach to the planning system.
I was pleased to hear the Conservative spokesman call for regulation. Denmark's approach makes ours pale into insignificance. In Denmark, the polluter pays many times over and there is no compunction about putting the blame where they believe it lies—on the creators of waste and those who refuse to deal with it. Denmark also provides incentives, and not just economic ones;
encouragement is given to recyclers, which links clearly to the idea of support. Denmark goes out of its way to support local authorities and non-governmental organisations in finding innovative solutions. Something may have been lost in translation because they refer to the whip and carrot approach. We would tend to define that as the carrot and stick approach.Denmark exhorts the population to be serious about the matter. The community that we visited was not compelled to be part of the recycling project but, by a voluntary agreement, some 40 per cent. of residents were part of it and aimed to recycle the vast majority of products they purchased. However, it is clear that composting must be used.
We took away from our visit the idea that the scheme has to be managed. I was pleased to hear my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford mentioning the notion of using caretakers or community wardens. It was inspiring to see people whose job previously had been checking and chasing people now taking a proactive role and leading the campaign for recycling and composting the maximum amount. I hope that my hon. Friend will look at similar measures in Committee, and at neighbourhood initiatives.
We need to encourage the Government to do more and we need to use composting. We have a problem with the animal by-products regulations, which has led to a spat involving those who believe that they should be able to compost whatever they like. I have talked to the National Renders Association, which says that we should not allow any animal by-products to be composted. Europe is driving us in one direction, but we are also being encouraged to do something slightly different. We need to clarify the situation.
The hon. Member for Lewes (Norman Baker) mentioned deposit schemes, which are important. They are historical, and we used to do them so well. However, we have gone backwards. In addition, it is not just a question of common or garden materials. We must recycle specialist waste, including car batteries, PVC materials and oil. We must make sure that people have a place where they can take those products, knowing that the good materials will be taken out and the awful stuff disposed of.
Mr. Sayeed: How has the Select Committee been able to reconcile the Waste and Emissions Trading Bill, as amended in the other place—particularly the need to heat meat waste up to 98 deg—and the animal by-products regulations?
Mr. Drew: I do not want to get into detail and pre-empt the report, but we are aware of the conflict. We visited the cement industry, which argues that what it does is not incineration; it burns at much higher temperatures. We have not explored that sufficiently, although I am not saying that that is the answer. That clearly links into emissions trading. One cannot isolate energy use and efficiency from that way in which we dispose of our waste, and I hope that our report will include some comments on that.
This is a very good Bill that deserves support. I know that the Government will to some extent quake at the implications of fettering future Governments, but if we
are serious about waste, we must look at the benefits of dealing with it properly, rather than worrying about the cost. At the end of the day, the costs can be covered if we are serious about this issue; however, the benefits are there for all to see.11.20 am
Gregory Barker (Bexhill and Battle): I, too, add my congratulations to the hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Joan Ruddock) on securing the time to introduce this extremely important Bill. It will certainly find a lot of support in my constituency, where the issue of recycling, reuse and waste minimisation has shot up the local political agenda in recent years—not by chance, but as a direct result of the very real problems in coping with the waste that is produced in East Sussex. I agree very strongly with some of the comments made by the hon. Member for Lewes (Norman Baker). A lot of such waste is generated not in my constituency, but in the city of Brighton and Hove, which is some distance away. It is my constituents who face the prospect of dealing with it—whether through an incinerator at Mountfield, through waste disposal at Pebsham, or through a landfill site above Bexhill, at the Ashdown brickworks. All of those proposals are the result of a waste strategy that has not been thought through, and which fails to recycle nearly as much waste as could be recycled.
That is not to say that the news in my constituency is all bad. In a way, it is a tale of two cities. Part of my constituency is covered by Wealden district council. Its Conservative administration has a terrific record, with a recycling rate of some 46 per cent. through a doorstep scheme. It is one of the leaders in the UK and it offers a model that the Government should try to apply across the country. Sadly, things are different in the Rother area. The people there are keen to recycle, but there is no doorstep collection service, and although many do their bit, as a result we have only a 10 per cent. recycling rate. More needs to be done. Councils such as Rother are looking to central Government to give a much stronger lead in terms of strategy and financing. The Government's arrangements make it very difficult for councils such as Rother to make the very significant step change that is necessary in order to meet the targets that we want them to achieve. I therefore genuinely welcome this Bill.
There are many benefits associated with recycling, apart from just our own local imperatives. It reduces the need for polluting landfill and incineration, but it also reduces the demand for raw materials. It avoids mining, quarrying and forestry, and it creates jobs. As has been said, up to 40,000 jobs could be created by 2010. It also helps to save energy, and therefore helps to combat climate change. Moreover, it is popular: nine out of 10 people would recycle more if they were given better facilities, according to an Environment Agency poll of last May. Above all, it is good in its own self. Recycling for its own sake helps to remind people about where they stand in relation to the environment that they occupy, and it encourages thrift and responsibility. Many of these virtues enabled the older generation, who lived through the war and its aftermath, to develop habits that stayed with them for a lifetime. It was the subsequent generation that got used to the disposable, throwaway society.
As a member of the Environmental Audit Select Committee, I am particularly concerned about this subject. At the moment, the Committee is investigating the subject of waste through a formal inquiry. It was no surprise to find that doorstep recycling enjoyed very strong support among all of the expert witnesses that we called. For example, the Chartered Institute of Waste Management told us:
- "We fully support the principle of rolling out kerb side collection schemes because it is really the most effective way of capturing the recyclables from householders. It is so easy and convenient for them."
- "The Agency has done some attitudinal survey work on normal people about recycling, how much they want to become involved in it, what was it actually that would induce them to be highly recyclist, and, surprise, surprise, we find that most people, the vast majority of people, say that they would be only too happy to participate in separated collection and recycling provided it was made easy for them."
- "I am getting the distinct impression that an awful lot of people who have come to see you have all got very good excuses for why they are not doing enough to tackle the problem of waste. They are all saying, 'If only the Government did something different', but that none of them needs to do anything different."
I hope that this Minister is a little more prepared to accept that the Government could, and indeed should, improve their record, rather than simply looking around for other people to blame. I know that he is keen to do more for the environment, and I hope that he will do so now in an applied way. I hope and anticipate that he will support this Bill—not just today, but during its subsequent stages—and that it does not get lost amid the Government's legislative programme.
What is clear is that the last completed inquiry into waste was unimpressed with the Government's record. A Select Committee report entitled "Delivering Sustainable Waste Policy" found that
- "national targets for recycling and composting . . . for 2010 (30 per cent.) and 2015 (33 per cent.) are depressingly unambitious . . . We recommend that new targets be set of 50 per cent. by 2010 and 60 per cent. by 2015."
- "The kerbside collection of source-separated waste is a necessity if we are to transform waste management."
- "It may seem rather obvious but if householders are to recycle their waste, they must be given the opportunity to do so relatively easily. In practice, this means that kerbside collections of recyclable materials are required".
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