Search questions

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 13 November 2002

Can I ask John and Victor, do either of you think that recycling rates in relation to municipal waste disposal will be helped by scrapping wheelie bins?

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 13 November 2002

That's of course talks about sensible use of wheelie bins. On the other hand to go around talking about removing all wheelie bins would surely be crack-pot.

• Question by: Tony Arbour
• Meeting date: 14 November 2001

I wonder if you could tell us how you're proposing to ensure that the boroughs, when they collect recyclable materials, actually have a market for them and they're not left with a large surplus which they have to dispose of themselves?

• Question by: Tony Arbour
• Meeting date: 14 November 2001

Except there's nothing more disillusioning for the residents of London who assiduously separate recyclable materials then to discover that those materials are in effect going straight to landfill. For example in the London Borough of Sutton, which turns out in fact to be the pariah of recycling authorities rather than allegedly the angel of recycling authorities, glass which is collected in the London Borough of Sutton goes directly to landfill. It does not pass go and it most definitely doesn't collect £200, and this in the London Borough of Sutton and I suspect over the whole of London is creating...

• Question by: Tony Arbour
• Meeting date: 14 November 2001

What about the general point that I've just made to you about those residents who are very keen to collect recyclable materials, but if they discover that these recyclable materials are not actually being recycled at all how would you suggest that borough councils explain that to their residents?

• Question by: Tony Arbour
• Meeting date: 14 November 2001

So are you suggesting that if there is to be no market for recyclable goods because of perhaps a glut or something, then boroughs should in fact say to their residents, 'Well it's an enormously costly exercise to sort and collect and so on. Just tip it in the ordinary refuse as you would have done before the days of recycling.'

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 14 November 2001

It follows from that that I imagine you wouldn't be minded to support further applications for incineration unless you were satisfied that the technology was safe and that the communities that might be affected by new incineration proposals were satisfied that they wouldn't suffer any detriment?

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 14 November 2001

One of the things that the government has done is to set a target of some 45% of household waste to be recovered by 2010. Now recovered, as I understand it, for those purposes includes incineration.

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 14 November 2001

And as I understand it, what you envisage is that more use of the new technologies would be something that hopefully could set people's minds at rest as to what happens to residual waste?

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 14 November 2001

Have you had much discussion with government along those lines? What progress are we making with ministers there? Are they thinking the same way?