Economics of the mad house (Bradford Liberal Democrats)

Bradford Liberal Democrats <info@bradfordlibdems.org.uk>

Economics of the mad house

September 14, 2004 12:00 AM

Landfill: the economics of the mad house and completely unsustainable.

Liberal Democrat Councillors are putting pressure on the ruling Conservative Group to improve re-cycling of household rubbish.

Councillor Jeanette Sunderland is putting a motion to Council next week calling for a proper plan backed up by cash. She said:

"The Government has set us a target of 25% of household rubbish to be recycled by 2005-06 and we won't make it. At the same time the landfill tax is increasing by £3 per tonne per year and Gordon Brown wants it to reach £35. If that happens the Council will be paying £6.7m a year simply to throw stuff into a hole in the ground.

"That is the economics of the mad house and completely unsustainable. Even if it was worth paying the money, there simply aren't enough holes in the ground. It wastes valuable resources and no one wants a landfill site at the bottom of their garden.

"The Conservative's response to this is to offer households ever increasing numbers of wheelie bins for separate collections yet many people don't have the room to store them so they refuse to have them. The alternative is to ask people to go to a recycling centre but unless you have a car or the centre is just round the corner, this is a practical impossibility.

"We know that most people want to re-cycle their rubbish but there has to be a better way than this. The Council must take action to look at mixed material recycling, smaller and different containers for household collections, composting, re-use and a whole host of other methods used by more go-ahead authorities."

The full text of the motion is below:

Meeting of Bradford Council 14th September 2004

DISPOSAL OF WASTE

To be moved by Councillor Sunderland

Seconded by Councillor Wallace

This Council notes:

1. The current cost of domestic waste disposal is £17.7m per year

2. The Council deals with 220,000 tonnes of domestic waste a year and this is rising

3. Landfill tax is £15 per tonne, rising at a rate of £3 per tonne per year and the Chancellor of the Exchequer has indicted that it could rise to £35 per tonne in the future.

4. The Council landfills 86% of domestic waste at a total cost in landfill tax of £2.8m in 2004-05 rising to £6.7m at £35 per tonne.

5. Bradford recycled just 10% of domestic waste in 2002-03 ( 14% in 2003-04 ) as opposed to the best in the country where recycling has reached 44% and the Regional average of 11.4% ( 2002-03 )

6. Government target for recycling in 2005-06 is 25%

7. The cost of landfilling domestic waste is unsustainable both in financial and environmental terms.

8. This Council therefore calls upon the Executive Member for the Environment to address this problem with urgency and produce a strategy and a budget to match which will both increase recycling, re-use, reduction and composting dramatically and thereby decrease the reliance on landfill.

9. Council calls for this strategy to be submitted to the Environment Improvement Committee in time for the Committee's comments to inform the budgetary deliberations for 2005/6