Lib Dems want to launch a war on waste in Kirklees (Kirklees Liberal Democrats)

Kirklees Liberal Democrats <info@kirkleeslibdems.org.uk>

Lib Dems want to launch a war on waste in Kirklees

January 12, 2007 12:02 AM

Kirklees Liberal Democrats are asking Councillors from the other parties on the council to support them in a bid to introduce additional recycling facilities across Kirklees at a meeting of the Council on 17th January 2007.

Lib Dems want to launch a war on waste in Kirklees

"The Council has previously committed to reduce, re-use, recycle and recover value from waste within Kirklees" says Councillor Turner.

"The Council has previously committed to reduce, re-use, recycle and recover value from waste within Kirklees" says Councillor Turner. We must now extend our services to provide a doorstep collection of dry recyclables to every home. We want to see that by 2010 recycling waste targets for Kirklees should be increased to 60% and by 2015 should be 75% so that we can be a Zero Waste authority by 2020. Additional services that the council can and should provide is a doorstep collection of glass to every household, an effective plastic recycling scheme, supplementing home composting of garden and kitchen waste with a doorstep collection of woody garden waste. We should also make further improvements to civic amenity sites into re-use and recycling centres to give greater emphasis to recycling and composting."

"The Local Government Association is coming up with a scheme which will charge people for the amount of rubbish they create. We think this sort of "spy in the bins" scheme will simply become a bureaucratic nightmare and cost a lot of extra money" says Councillor Turner. More worryingly it could simply remove the incentive for people to recycle. They may just decide to pay for throwing away their rubbish rather than change behaviour to reduce, re-use, recycle and recover value from the rubbish they create or materials they no longer require. We would like the council to think of ways it could offer incentives to residents that would benefit the environment rather that just let residents pay for their rubbish to be burnt or put in holes in the ground as either option has a detrimental effect on the environment."

"One suggestion being made by the Local Government Association is that residents should pay for their rubbish through a service charge. We would not support this position as it is against the principle that local taxation is a tax we all pay to run local services and not a charge made on users of a particular service" says Councillor Turner. "The Council must do all it can to encourage residents to reduce, reuse or recycle the materials they use. We would like the Council to establish a Zero Waste Agency to promote resource efficiency, encourage recycling and the reuse of waste materials. We need to start looking at waste differently not as a problem to be burnt or buried in the ground as neither option is attractive or useful as a long term solution to managing the waste we all produce. We want the District to have a long term goal of zero waste. This can only be achieved by treating waste as a resource."