To Hell in a Kerbside Box? |
Commissioned by Resource Magazine, May 2003 |
So, we learn that the so-called 'Doorstep Recycling Bill' has passed unopposed in the second reading. As readers will be aware, the main gist of this piece is a requirement for all local authorities to provide the same service for recyclables as they do for waste - for the vast majority of households, that means a kerbside collection. This is but the latest instalment of the long-running romance between the UK's waste policymakers and the kerbside collection. In the last round of allocations from the National Waste Minimisation and Recycling fund, DEFRA poured a large part (£60m) of the £76m available into kerbside collections, despite the fact that the long-term sustainability of these schemes is far from clear-cut. Meanwhile, projects focusing on bring systems got £6m - despite the fact that, according to DEFRA's own figures, CA sites and bring banks collect 70% of all materials collected for recycling in the UK - and education and information programmes a mere £2m. This bias is perhaps not surprising, as the Environment Minister Michael Meacher himself declared in this very periodical (March/April 2002) that he favours "a big increase in kerbside collections", since "source separation is an extremely important factor". The very fact that Mr Meacher can make such a close and unquestioned association between 'source separation' and kerbside collections hints at a deep-rooted confusion. Kerbside collections have no intrinsic affinity with consumer responsibility. In fact, rather than encouraging the waste-producing individual to take responsibility, they aim to minimize the householder's input by placing the lion's share of the burden on the shoulders of the local authority. It might be argued that kerbside collections are the most efficient way for a society which has overslept for twenty years and woken up to find itself up to its chin in unconsidered waste to get up to speed, but it would be a hollow and short-sighted case. Kerbside collections may be able, at great expense and huge effort from authorities, to squeeze a quick result out of a complacent, uninformed and unengaged public when nothing else will. But that argument starts at the wrong end of the problem. (It is also only half true - research carried out for the Waste Not, Want Not review in 2002 showed that although 11 million out of 20 million households have some sort of kerbside collection, only 798 000 tonnes of material were collected). The battle against waste must be fought inside people's heads, not at their garden gates. But councils that take the need to educate and inform seriously, such as Sutton Council, who have hired a public relations company at a cost of £100,000 per year to help cut contamination levels in their kerbside collection, are considered radical. Nobody raises an eyebrow when a council spends many times that amount on kerbside bins. Naturally we should learn from best practice in other European countries. But is it really true that the main reason that their recycling rates are better is that they have kerbside collections while we do not? Surely an even more significant difference is the climate of awareness, and the culture of civic responsibility that prevails in Europe? If that is so, then all the kerbside boxes in the world will not help the UK catch up. Bring systems may seem old-fashioned in the brave new world of the kerbside collection, where gleaming white separation vehicles soundlessly swallow the contents of immaculate containers so as not to disturb the family enjoying their over-packaged ready-meals inside the house. But if the government wants to create a long-term solution to the waste problems of the future, it needs to recognise that kerbside collections foster dependency, not responsibility. They perpetuate the old, complacent attitudes of 'out of sight, out of mind' - you put your waste out for someone else to deal with, and that's that. If consumers are to be part of the solution to the waste problems of the future and not part of the problem, they must be encouraged to deal with the consequences of their own behaviour themselves. |