Waste Recycling: South Gloucestershire

Debate between Rory Stewart and Steve Barclay

Tuesday 23rd February 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rory Stewart)]

I thank my hon. Friends the Members for Kingswood (Chris Skidmore) and for Thornbury and Yate (Luke Hall) for bringing this important subject forward for debate. I do not say that facetiously; the question of waste recycling in South Gloucestershire has its equivalents across the country. It is not simply a South Gloucestershire issue.

I take this opportunity to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Kingswood on the forthcoming birth of his child. It is very good news that in a month’s time a baby is coming. It is good that my hon. Friend is already thinking about the nappies. He focused on the reduction in the size of the landfill bin to 140 litres; the decision to move from a separate waste collection to a single collection in a box in which the different types of waste—plastic, paper, metal and glass—are separated by dividers; and the question of whether elderly people will be able to move the recycling boxes.

Those are good points to raise, particularly as we are coming to the great moment of “Clean for the Queen”. It is a great ambition to create, for the Queen’s 90th birthday, that green and pleasant land of which Blake spoke. In Britain, we should take particular pride in that, because Britain has been famous for a long time for its neatness. Tourists who come here have long respected this country for being a tidy place. The steps that South Gloucestershire is taking show that continued commitment.

The points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Thornbury and Yate are particularly important because this country has more than 300 recycling systems. It is a little bit absurd. As we go from council to council, we see that some collect waste commingled, some—about 40—separate food waste, and about another 260 do not. There are different sizes and colours of bin, different types of truck, different types of recycling system and different types of anaerobic digester consuming waste. That all adds cost.

[Stephen Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

Rubbish!

[Rory Stewart]

It is indeed. In London alone, we could probably save £19 million a year if we had a single standard recycling system. Across the country as a whole, the savings would be extraordinary. We spend more than £3 billion a year simply collecting waste. If we had a single, harmonised system across the country, we could drive up recycling rates, massively reduce the cost for ratepayers and achieve extraordinary things for the environment and for councils themselves. South Gloucestershire Council is therefore a good example on which to focus.

That South Gloucestershire example is also a good illustration of some of the problems involved in realising such a dream. The council has taken some fantastic steps. It has separated the waste, which, as my hon. Friend the Member for Kingswood has pointed out, means we can get out the value. If we commingle the waste—putting the glass, paper and card together in the same box—it can be a real problem, even with modern methods, to extract the glass as it goes through the system. We should be able to get much more value out of the paper or the glass, which can go back to the council and the rate payer, if we keep the waste separate. The council has a good system for doing that in South Gloucestershire—a single box, with dividers to make separation easier.

The challenge, as my hon. Friend pointed out, is making sure that the system is comprehensible to the public and something to which the public can respond and relate. I therefore encourage South Gloucestershire Council to take on board the points made by my two hon. Friends, along with our congratulations on the direction in which they are going and on the national leadership it is showing.

It seems sensible, as my hon. Friend the Member for Kingswood said, to look at the needs of the vulnerable and of large families. I believe that South Gloucestershire Council already takes into account the fact that if a family has six members, it may need a larger bin. The council may wish to show additional flexibility for exactly the kind of people mentioned by my hon. Friend.

I do not wish to talk simply about the negative aspects—both my hon. Friends made very good points—but to look at the positives. If South Gloucestershire Council gets this right, we will have a national model. Why do we need a national model? We need one because South Gloucestershire Council is recycling only about 47% of its waste at the moment, which is not quite good enough. Wales, which has a pretty challenging geography, is currently recycling about 53% of its waste. If Wales can do it, there is no reason why England cannot do it as well. There are no profound cultural differences there.

We are committed to getting to a recycling target of 50% across the country by 2020. We will get there by following the lead of places such as South Gloucestershire. I therefore urge my hon. Friends to work with the council to reach out to surrounding councils in Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and the south-west and try to encourage harmonisation. That can be done. Manchester has now got 10 councils together to come up with a single recycling system. It is investing hundreds of millions of pounds over the next 25 years to make that work.

South Gloucestershire Council could be showing exactly that lead for the country—and, my goodness, we need it. The reason we need it is that we live in a world in which such resources are under pressure. We have talked about separating food waste. We are currently consuming 70% of the world’s water just on producing the food eaten by the current population. The average household in Britain wastes £65 a month by throwing away food that does not need to be thrown away. We are consuming and depleting resources—oil, precious minerals—that could be recycled and used again. We are creating a lot of unnecessary carbon by creating materials that could be recycled. We put into landfill 50% of the stuff that does not need to go into landfill, as my hon. Friend the Member for Kingswood pointed out.

If we can get this right, Britain can be a national example, our great environmental industries can take off, we can export some of these skills and we can show the world that we are an environmental leader. We can also make British jobs and generate energy out of it, we can have a much better circular economy and it will be good for our production. Thanks to the fantastic contributions from my hon. Friends, the South Gloucestershire example could be a very important part of such a solution.

Question put and agreed to.