Waste conundrum

There was a time when the average household, even one with children, would have nothing more than a single dustbin in which to dispose of their week’s rubbish. Nowadays, fleets of wheelie bins, recycling bins, food bins and the rest are parked outside homes in streets across the land. People fret over what items go where and risk penalties if they get it wrong. When they discover, as this newspaper has previously disclosed, that the rubbish they seek to recycle ends up in landfill on the other side of the world, they are understandably perplexed, even angry.

But the big issue is not how we get rid of our rubbish but why we have so much of it. The Government’s new resource and waste strategy seeks to tackle this element of the waste conundrum by requiring retailers, food manufacturers and supermarkets to pay the full cost of recycling or disposing of packaging. Critics say this will put up prices, since the retailers will simply pass on the costs. But the time has surely come to put an end to the absurd amounts of plastic used to hold fruit, vegetables and other perishables that could be sold loose, as they still are by greengrocers. It is also a good idea to reform the “best before” regime, which leads to the unnecessary dumping of perfectly good food.

Perhaps if food producers have to pay more for waste, they will reduce it. But there should be incentives to do so, not just penalties. Last year, around 11 million tons of packaging waste was produced and about two thirds of that was recycled or exported. Since China stopped taking British plastic waste, the amount stockpiled has grown because there has been insufficient investment in recycling plants. That needs to end.