LAWR

LANDFILL MINING Let's 'stop talking rubbish' and start talking rot! Is the UK becoming a 'treasure island' which could see landfill sites reopened to capture old PET bottles that once upon a time could not be reused? Carsten Diekmann finds out. hat's in a letter? Well quite a lot really when that single letter separates two bodies allegedly fighting for the same thing. The recent criticism of Defra by EFRA (the Environmental, Food and Rural Affairs Committee) over the Government's 'stepping back' from showing strong leadership over recycling targets was more than a warning shot about who is driving the green agenda. Last year only 43% of waste was recycled which means that Defra by its own pronouncement will miss its 2020 target of 50% at a time when EFRA wants it to step up to the plate and push for more rather than less. That is more recycling and less waste or landfill. The so-called degradation of the effort comes at a time when the debate over climate change has gone beyond gathering storm clouds – it is now at force ten. The nub of the issue seems to be down to finances and legions of still- confused consumers who don't know their Tetrapaks from their PET plastics; in other words, what can they recycle and what still needs to be landfilled? Buying behaviour I would argue that Government has a role to play here, but industry – the packaging and retail sectors particularly - need to do more by ensuring that more plastics can be recycled and that the consumers understand this – in plain, no technical language at the point of shelf and the point of sale so that it influences their buying behaviour as well as their disposal practices. Manufacturers would also look more favourably on putting their products in 100% recyclable plastics and so the recycling or down-cycling of packaging becomes a virtuous circle and cycle, with each partner in the demand and supply chain influencing the behaviour of the next one along, and all triggered by better educated consumers. Yes, this may influence the price paid for food, but would ultimately result in lower council tax payments as local authorities would have lower refuse and landfill bills to find, if they ring-fenced the savings. Alas, there will always be landfill, but even here we can change the debate and stop talking rubbish, and start talking rot! Rather like police forces that have so-called 'cold cases' or historical unsolved murders, councils have literally buried their waste issues. In police cases, advances in forensic science means that we can successfully revisit unsolved murders and bring prosecutions based upon DNA evidence. Similarly, scratch below the surface of landfill sites and there are perfectly preserved plastics that could be the answer to future demand for materials rather than the dependence we have on virgin plastics currently made from the by-products of the fossil fuels that are dangerously linked to climate change. In essence, we can almost archeologically exhume millions of tonnes of plastics that modern technology can now recycle or 'down- cycle.' 24 Local Authority Waste & Recycling February 2015 W " Scratch below the surface of landfill sites and there are perfectly preserved plastics that could be the answer to future demand for materials. " Carston Diekmann

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