In February Dr Alan Whitehead MP introduced his proposal for a Renewable Content Obligation Bill during a ten-minute rule bill presented to the House of Commons. The proposed bill would obligate certain products manufactured in the UK to respect a minimum content of recycled materials, effectively “closing the loop” in recycling of waste materials and packaging.

Ten-minute bills rarely reach the legislative stage; instead they serve to position issues “on the record”. Dr Whitehead’s bill certainly achieves this by drawing attention to the need to match our actions to our words when it comes to the recycling loop.

Whilst great strides have been achieved in increasing local levels of recycling, we have yet to see consistent use of recycled material, and a lot of our waste still ends up shipped overseas, in landfill or incinerated.

A recent LGA study showed that the proportion of food packaging that is recyclable remains limited. This is especially true with plastics: while most cardboard boxes in the UK are made of nearly 90% material, with plastics this is not the case. On the other hand, companies and products that already incorporate recyclates, and there are many, complain that their voluntary efforts come at the cost of losing some of their competitiveness.

In our times of economic contraction, this seems a waste of waste, a waste of carbon emissions, and a waste when there are more energy and carbon efficient purposes for recycled materials, including use in new products.

The proposed Bill would directly address this by offering a universal regime guaranteeing a market for recycled products, and in the words of Dr Whitehead allowing “known recyclate streams to be matched with product ranges”. The types of products that could be designated would be those that can incorporate known recyclate streams relatively easily, such as construction materials incorporating ash, ground glass and aggregate. The WRAP and Environment Agency Waste Protocols Project which seeks to identify the point at which waste becomes a resource will mutually complement the bill.

Dr Whitehead’s ambitious proposal should be warmly welcomed by the waste industry and consumers alike. The question that remains is: will the Government follow suit and take the bait?

By Tessa Lennartz

Tags: Renewable Content Obligation Proposal

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 2nd, 2009 at 2:29 pm and is filed under News Archive. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.