Food for thought on waste

The county council's head of sustainable development, Chris Cousins, has told The Oxford Times that the council will have composting sites for food waste in place by April 2009 at the latest, with the five district councils doing the collections. But in the meantime, how are are we all going to cope?

Back in 2003, we highlighted new get-tough-on-rubbish measures from the Government to force councils to reduce landfill and avoid EU fines for not reducing it fast enough. Five years later, the county is proud of the response to its call for residents to produce less waste in the first place. Oxfordshire now comes second only to Norfolk in that league table - and it is in the top 25 per cent for the amount of rubbish recycled or composted per head of population.

Back then, only about 12 per cent of rubbish was recycled nationally, with some 80 per cent going to landfill and eight per cent being incinerated. Now about a third is recycled nationally and Oxfordshire achieves a 38 per cent recycling figure. Here it should be mentioned that those daily train-loads of London rubbish still going to landfill in Sutton Courtenay count against London's figures in the league, not Oxfordshire's.

In 2003 we also spoke to the Government-funded Envirowise programme to minimise trade waste, run by AEA Technology in Harwell. Director Martin Gibson told us that, in offices, at least one way to minimise generation of paper waste was to cut back on bins. Could it be, a cynic might ask, that Oxford City Council (among others) introduced fortnightly collections according to the same principle, namely that we would all find it so unpleasant living with our waste for a fortnight that we would produce less of it?

City council member for a cleaner city Jean Fooks answered the question: "Funnily enough, though I wouldn't put it like that, there does seem to be some truth there. Restricting collections does make people think about what they can do to produce less in the first place.

"I noticed this with litter bins, too. When there are fewer of them, there is less litter. I don't know where it all goes."

The other side of that particular coin was highlighted by Andrew Pau, head of waste management at the county council, who said: "I was talking to a colleague in Devon, where they have introduced food waste collections. He told me that when people see the amount of food waste they produce, they think of ways to reduce it."

But back to the question of how to cope now. Banbury-based WRAP (Waste Resources Action Programme) is now running a campaign called Love Food Hate Waste (www. lovefoodhatewaste.com) designed to answer that question.

At the very start of the literature is a startling statistic - we waste 33 per cent of the food we buy, but 90 per cent of us are unaware of how much we waste. Still more food is wasted before it reaches our homes; it goes out of the back door of the supermarket when it goes past its sell-by date.

WRAP highlighed four main reasons for throwing food away - we let it go past its use-by date; we cook too much, particularly rice, potatoes and pasta; families waste more because children's appetites are fickle; busy lifestyles lead to unplanned eating and shopping.

The campaign's website makes it appear that the Government is aiming at nothing short of making many of us change our eating habits. There are recipes galore for quick and easy meals that are far from take-away fast-food burgers and are listed under the heading Cook Once Eat Twice, along with tips of how to use left-overs effectively.

Mr Cousins said: "Obviously, increasing affluence causes increasing waste. People no longer necessarily boil chicken carcasses, for instance, leaving just the clean bones to throw away. And of course the ready-made meals that many people now eat cause more packaging." The pay-as-you-throw idea, to charge people by the weight of their rubbish, was thrown out by Government on the grounds of unfairness - notably on those without gardens who were unable to compost their own vegetable waste.

And there is trade waste. Here Oxfordshire County Council is proud of its record. It trailblazed a policy of promoting waste efficiency among businesses, being the first council in the UK to employ a dedicated commercial waste reduction officer.

As a consequence, it was chosen to host the BREW (Business Resource Efficiency and Waste programe) Centre for local authorities.

Oxfordshire County Council member for sustainable development, Roger Belson, said: "We were privileged to be chosen to lead this innovative project. The decision was a reflection upon the expertise and knowledge that exists here at Oxfordshire County Council."

But amazingly, the funding for the project is now under threat, as is funding for WRAP, thanks to £300m cutbacks at DEFRA (Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs) threatened by the Government.

Mr Belson added: "It is no surprise to me that our officers have been successfully managing this project. Their success is good news for local government and reflects very well on Oxfordshire County Council. Businesses across England are being helped to reduce their waste and to cut costs.

"However, this is only a pilot project at the moment. News of a possible £300m cut in Government budgets for environmental issues is very sobering and could put the continuation of this good work into question."

All in all, it seems that rats are in for a good time. Even people who reduce their rubbish may suffer from their attentions, thanks to the negligence of their neighbours.