Waste not, want not says Demos report
15 Jan 2000
Government policy on waste management is leading the country down a dead end, according to a new report from the infulential; centre-left think-tank Demos. The report, written by industrial economist Robin Murray of the London School of Economics, says that the incineration techniques favoured by the government should be abandoned for a new emphasis on recycling and waste reduction.
Recycling rather than incinerating would help reduce greenhouse gas emissions and even prove a money-spinner, says Murray. Currently, the UK fails to recycle two-thirds of the aluminium cans it uses every year, and has a huge mountain of non-recycled waste paper.
The problem, says Murray, is that the waste industry is structured around disposal rather than recycling. Elsewhere - notably in California, Seattle, and Germany - the picture is quite different, and a `zero-waste' economy is developing.
Murray supports the establishment of community-based recycling operations which could then be `wired together' nationally. `What is regarded as utopian here is normal practice elsewhere,' he comments.
