Extracts from the Jan-Feb 2003 edition of Renew
These extracts only represent about 25% of it

2. PIU on Waste

The Cabinet Office Performance and Innovation Unit, fresh from its energy review, and these days called the Strategy Unit, has been looking at waste management- not nuclear waste but domestic waste. But actually, from some of their preliminary comments, you might not be so sure. Thus in the interim report, which is on the PIU web site, they comment ‘public perceptions tend to be focussed on the potential environmental and health hazards of waste disposal’ and in particular emissions, whereas the PIU evidently felt that the main issue was to find ways of dealing with the ever increasing amounts of waste. The problems of emissions had to be seen in the context of the risk of ‘failure to improve the management of existing waste streams’. The report itself ‘Waste not Want Not’ had few surprises. For example, it calls for more recycling and waste reduction as opposed to landfill, and suggested an increase in the Landfill Tax from £13 as at present to £35/tonne, a proposal partly picked up in his mini-budget by Gordon Brown who proposed a £3/tonne increase by 2005. More in Renew 142. Meanwhile see the Feature and Technology sections of Renew 141 for coverage of waste issues.

* There are certainly lots of issues kicking around in this field at present, e.g. the new EU ruling that, by 2006, the UK (or rather Local Authorities) must recycle all electrical goods- a minimum 4kg per person p.a. out of the 14kg produced per person on average.