Waste Reduction Report

The Science and Technology Committee has published a Waste Reduction report today (20th Aug), which calls for efforts on waste reduction to be extended from individuals to reducing the high waste levels of companies. The report explains that that domestic waste is only 9% of Britain's total waste. Of the remainder, 32 per cent comes from demolition and construction, 30 per cent from mining and quarrying, 13 per cent from industry and 11 per cent from the commercial sector.

Joan Ruddock, Waste Minister, said it was wrong to suggest that the Government had focused disproportionately on domestic waste explaining that the landfill tax escalator specifically targets business and commerce as high waste producers.

Nevertheless, there were some particular focus areas within the report, which I thought made a lot of sense.

The report recommended that Government restructure local authority waste targets and costs which currently focus on decreasing the weight of domestic waste sent to landfill and allow them to address commercial and industrial waste by providing support and disposal facilities to businesses. There was disappointment that funding had been reduced to some of the main environmental support bodies that help both large and small businesses reduce their waste, such as Envirowise, NISP and WRAP. The report also said that the Government should be giving a higher priority to the collection of data for non-domestic waste streams.

Another interesting recommendation in the report was that VAT should be reduced or removed from the cost of repairing televisions, vacuum cleaners and fridges to discourage people from throwing them away as soon as they stop working. This does make sense because at the moment, electronic appliances are getting cheaper and labour more expensive, so it is just not worth getting things repaired. Instead, more and more appliances are being dumped into landfill and replaced by newer designs.

According to the Times Online, repairing a vacuum cleaner costs at least £50, roughly the same price as a new model. Repairs for televisions, computers and cameras are often more than £100 and fewer people now take out warranties to guard against breakdown.

The Lords committee recognises that it may not be in manufacturers' interests to build longer-lasting goods, and suggest an incentive to make sustainable goods more economically valuable. The committee argues that variable VAT should be introduced so that goods that use sustainable materials and fewer virgin resources have reduced VAT or none at all. It recommends that DEFRA work with the Treasury to implement this initiative.

I will be interested to see what happens next as a result of this report.