| Government accused of lacking 'will' over plastic waste reprocessing
Simeon Goldstein, packagingnews.co.uk, 30 January 2008
The government has been accused of lacking the "capability or will" to do something about plastic packaging waste, after environment minister Joan Ruddock said the country had excess reprocessing capacity.
Packaging Federation chief executive Dick Searle said "national leadership", rather than operating through local authorities, was needed to put in place adequate collection and reprocessing facilities.
"The government appears to have the dilemma of wanting to be seen to give more autonomy to local areas, but there are some issues that don't make sense [to deal with locally]," said Searle.
Ruddock yesterday (29 January) responded to a parliamentary question from Liberal Democrat MP Mike Hancock by saying the UK had "excess capacity to reprocess plastic waste".
But she said much of the capacity was "too old, too small or targeting the wrong end-products".
Hancock raised the issue of non-bottle plastics to "prompt the government to doing something" about it, and said it should help "generate demand" for recycled plastics.
Ruddock said there was around one million tonnes of non-bottle mixed plastic packaging in the domestic waste stream each year. In 2006, by comparison, 132,000 tonnes of plastic bottles were collected from households and recycled. |
