Secretary of State to Consider Shepway’s Home Composting Argument
Cllr Rory Love with the Rt Hon Hilary Benn MP, Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
The Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, The Rt Hon Hilary Benn MP, has told Shepway’s Cabinet Member for the Environment, Cllr Rory Love, that he has “raised a really good point” concerning councils that want to promote home composting, and that he will go away and think about the solution.
In front of a packed audience at last week’s Local Government Association conference in Birmingham, Cllr Love explained the dilemma faced by many councils over home composting of garden and much kitchen waste. To a round of applause from hundreds of delegates, he asked Hilary Benn to consider how home composting could be reflected in councils’ official recycling rates.
Rory Love explained that if councils collect compostable waste and take it to a composting site, then they receive credit in their recycling figures for every ton collected. Yet if they actively promote home composting, for instance by giving away subsidised or free composting bins, then they do not receive credit for any waste disposed of in the composters. However, home composting is the ‘greenest’ way of disposing of such waste and avoids the carbon footprint of the collection vehicles. Independent research by the Waste and Resources Action Programme has shown that an average household with a home composter saves 115kg of compostable waste per year from being put out for collection; nearly 10% of the household’s total waste.
Cllr Love said that Shepway is currently the 3rd best recycler in Kent, with a rate of nearly 40%, but has ambitions to do even better, and would view a new promotion for home composting making a contribution to further improvements.
Hilary Benn said that he could see the dilemma Shepway faced, and told Cllr Love:
“I would agree with you that if we can encourage people to compost at home then surely that makes sense all ways round.”
Rory Love said:
“I am pleased and encouraged by the response from the new Secretary of State. He has asked me to write to him with further details of our case for including home composting in the recycling figures. He promised to ‘go away and think about it’, and to come back to me on this very important point of ensuring the recycling targets promote sustainable, low carbon solutions. Currently, and perversely, the way the recycling target figures are calculated encourages councils to increase their greenhouse gas emissions.”
9th July 2007
Details of the Waste & Resources Action Programme research are available at www.wrap.org.uk
“ Currently, and perversely, the way the recycling target figures are calculated encourages councils to increase their greenhouse gas emissions ”