Recycling

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Wednesday 13th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Gardner of Parkes (Con)]

My Lords—

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb]

The Minister clearly will understand that incineration capacity is increasing quite fast but, at the same time, the residual waste stream that goes to incinerators is less than it should be to keep incinerators going at full capacity. What are the Government doing to encourage local councils not to support incineration of materials that could be recycled? We want to increase recycling, but we will not do so if it is all going to incineration.

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, this issue is fairly complicated. The first thing that we have concentrated on in this cycle is prevention of waste. We all need to concentrate on how much less should go into landfill, how much less should go into incineration, and how much we can reuse and recycle. With incineration, we must remember that there is some energy recovery, but we certainly need to do better in this country on reuse and recycling. I will perhaps want to discuss the matter with the noble Baroness in greater detail, given the time.