Waste is a political issue. We have had decades of talk but very little action. We may have raised the levels of domestic recycling but nothing has been done to curb the amount of waste generated in the first place. Instead consumption has soared, the waste mountain has continued to grow, and we have signed ourselves up to high volumes waste streams to feed incinerators for years to come.
What is urgently needed is political leadership. Whilst a few of us will change our lifestyles and our purchasing habits to eliminate the packaging in our lives, we urgently need government legislation. The government did it for car safety belts, for the smoking ban and now is the turn of wasteful packaging.
Market forces have failed us, as has been clearly demonstrated in the financial markets in recent weeks. Our packaging and waste disposal industry, like everything else around us, is based on the false premise that the free market will deliver societal and environmental benefits via the invisible hand of competitive forces. How long are we prepared to wait? Supplies of natural mineral resources on Earth are finite and even biological packaging requires suitable land, which is in limited supply. We urgently need to use our resources more wisely and to move on from the throwaway society we live in. We cannot continue to produce more and more disposable packaging!
Green Party policies are based on the concept of zero waste, which aims to eliminate altogether waste sent to landfill or incinerators. Our policies are designed to prevent waste arising in the first place. As long as the economy is allowed to grow in wasteful ways, the domestic waste stream will increase in size.
The Green Party believes in resource taxation to encourage not only sustainable production but also waste reduction, recycling and waste avoidance through reuse and repair. We also need a zero VAT rating for the use of recycled materials and reused packaging.
We need much tighter regulation to:
- exercise quality control on consumer products, setting minimum standards for safety and design, recyclability, durability, ease of repair and maximum energy efficiency in use
- set statutory targets for minimum recycled content for suitable products, such as newspapers, glass and metal containers and all paper and plastic packaging which does not come directly into contact with food.
- phase out unnecessary disposable products and packaging
- improve the design of packaging to minimise waste and maximise recyclability.
- impose a variable Recovery Charge on all packaging and short life disposable products including imported goods, with the revenue distributed to District Councils on a per capita basis to finance waste recovery schemes
- introduce mandatory returnable deposits on reusable packaging.
- increase guarantees and spares-availability periods required of manufacturers for all long-life products
