If the East is no longer taking our waste, we’re going to have to do one or more of the following things:
- Landfill it - but we need a proper landfill duty. At the moment there is an escalator on this tax which is reviewed every year. We need to look at ways to increase that dramatically to drive changes through the councils.
- Energy from Waste - burning plastics and other waste is a solution for the stuff which is there. These facilities scrub the gases coming out. Realistically this is not a solution for the long run when we need to halve our carbon emissions in 10 years!
- Reduce our waste - we really need forward looking policies that use a pay-per-weight of household waste. This incentive drives right the way down to the user. Ireland have implemented it - check out paper here.. But we need to drive behavioural change in every way possible!! Better Century should be able to help with that!
Would be useful to know what folks think our response should be?
My preference would be to lobby our government to ban single use plastics. Canada has pledged to ban single use plastics by 2021.