Government accused of tunnel vision on waste and recycling

REACTING to last week’s announcement of the new Waste Strategy for England by Environment Minister David Miliband, the Quarry Products Association has accused the Minister of having tunnel vision and said he personified the Government’s limited vision on waste and recycling.

Pointing to the narrow scope of the announcement, which focused attention solely on domestic waste, the QPA says it is determined to underline the importance of good-news stories in the waste and recycling sector that are too often missed by government and the public.

For example, over the last 15 years the use of recycled materials in the GB aggregates industry has more than doubled to 70 million tonnes (equivalent to more than twice the annual volume of household waste generated) and the recycling share of the aggregates market has increased from 10% to 25% – three times higher than the European average.

The QPA says the insinuation that all landfill is just domestic waste and therefore all landfill is environmentally damaging detracts from the beneficial use of inert waste in quarry restoration – a process that can have significant gains for the environment and biodiversity and which is too often overlooked. To make matters worse, the Association says the regulatory environment actually hinders quarriers’ ability to use inert materials for quarry restoration, which is at odds with the Government’s aim for ‘more re-use and recycling’.

The QPA adds that Defra’s new Waste Strategy even contains factual errors that amount to the Department misrepresenting the potential supply of recycled materials that could be used in aggregates markets. The Strategy claims that 90 million tonnes of inert waste is suitable for reprocessing into aggregate, whereas DCLG’s own research identifies that of the 90 million tonnes of CDE waste generated annually in England and Wales, only around half is suitable for aggregates use and 42 million tonnes is already used in aggregates markets.

The QPA’s director general, Simon van der Byl, commented: ‘There is a feeling whenever government publicly talks about recycling and landfill that we all need to pull up our bootlaces, which is a frustrating opinion for an industry that leads Europe in this field. There is a need today, on the back of Mr Miliband’s announcement of the new Waste Strategy, to hit home the message that the quarrying industry is leading the way on recycling and can offer environmentally beneficial solutions for managing inert waste if the Government will finally see sense on its regulation.’