Government to double UK recycling targets
22 Aug 2000
The UK's level of waste recycling is `pathetically low,' according to environment minister Michael Meacher. In a BBC interview, Meacher promised to double local authorities' targets for recycling.
Currently, only 9 per cent of municipal waste is recycled, against a target of 15 per cent. However, local authorities will soon have to face even more stringent targets - Meacher plans to increase the target level to 30 per cent by 2010.
At the same time, room in landfill sites is in increasingly short supply. Currently, 85 per cent of municipal waste goes to landfill sites, but Meacher said that this will have to fall to 35 per cent by 2016. The government's favoured option for this reduction is an increase in the landfill tax, accompanied by an incinerator building programme. However, a report from the US Environmental Protection Agency that recommends the classification of dioxins as probable human carcinogens and identifies incinerators as a source of these compounds has triggered environmental opposition to this scheme.
Meacher was quick to downplay these risks. `Incinerators are now operated to a hugely tightened emissions standard as a result of an EU directive which came in in November 1996,' he said. `That requires dioxin emissions to be one part per billion.'
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