Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Caroline Spelman and Joan Ruddock(12 years, 10 months ago)
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Joan Ruddock (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)
10. What her policy is on future levels of recycling of domestic and commercial waste.
The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mrs Caroline Spelman)
I commend the right hon. Lady for her long-standing commitment to this issue. Our waste review set out our ambition to move from a throwaway society to a zero-waste economy. This includes maximising the recycling of waste that cannot be prevented or reused from households and businesses. We will work with local authorities and the waste management industry to make it easier for everyone to recycle, whether at home, at work or on the go.
Joan Ruddock
Just a year ago the Secretary of State said of recycling:
“We need to go faster and we need to go further.”
So is it the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government who has crushed her ambition and vetoed a target for recycling in this country? Having won the battle over fortnightly bin collections, why does she not now adopt Friends of the Earth’s target of halving black sack waste by 2020, thus reducing costs and creating jobs?
Mrs Spelman
I support the scale of the ambition of Friends of the Earth’s target, and we are of course bound by an EU target to recycle 50% of household refuse, but if targets are too specific they can be distorting, driving councils to meet centrally imposed indicators instead of doing what is best for their local circumstances. A good example of that was the landfill allowance trading scheme, which led to the anomaly of disincentivising the recycling of business waste.
Waste Review
Debate between Caroline Spelman and Joan Ruddock(12 years, 10 months ago)
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Mrs Spelman
I thank the Chairman of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee for her warm welcome for the Government’s waste review and her recognition that LATS fulfilled a role whose impact the landfill tax has largely overtaken in helping us reduce the amount that goes to landfill.
At the same time as publishing the waste review, I have published the Government’s anaerobic digestion strategy. We see the future for anaerobic digestion as very important. The Select Committee Chairman makes an important point. It is not just food waste that can be used as a feedstock for anaerobic digestion, and we must be careful that food crops are not caught as feedstock for anaerobic digestion. We should be using waste.
Joan Ruddock (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)
I suspect that the Communities Secretary eats rather more chicken tikka masala than the right hon. Lady. Does she agree that the chicken tikka masala remains would be much better put into a food collection than into a black sack? Will she make some progress on further recycling? What does she think of the Friends of the Earth target, which I very much support, of halving black sack waste by 2020?
Mrs Spelman
I have to feed teenagers who are rather partial to chicken tikka masala, and there is very little left at the end of the day. The Government will be working with local councils to increase the frequency and quality of rubbish collections and make it easier to recycle, to tackle measures that encourage councils specifically to cut the scope of collections and to support them where they wish to provide a weekly collection for smelly waste.