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PRESS RELEASE
October 18, 2004
CRN/AN/PR49
To be released immediately
The Community Recycling Network UK (CRN UK) is calling on the Government to make recycling credits mandatory to non-profit third parties.
In response to DEFRA's consultation on changes to the Recycling Credits Scheme the CRN UK has told the Government that recycling credits, particularly credits paid to third parties, are a very important issue for the community recycling sector and, potentially, the largest single financial factor affecting it.
Andy Moore, Co-ordinator of the Community Recycling Network UK, says: "We are pleased that constructive changes are being considered by the Government. When the recycling credits scheme was introduced in the early 1990s our sector saw it as a sound and simple environmental instrument, designed to operate at a community level."
The CRN UK believes that recycling credits have the potential to be what they were designed to be - a very powerful financial instrument matched to the landfill tax.
Andy Moore adds: "The scope for community-driven, human-scale recycling collections, where realisations and understanding by the householder are as important as technical capacity, has barely been explored.
"Recycling credits can help empower local actors to realise value from the wastestream in the form of jobs and local economic multipliers. In short, they're a good thing for the environment and the economy.
"This is the very field where this recycling credit mechanism has the greatest potential to breathe life into truly sustainable solutions. Wide-scale, multiple and replicable, linked infrastructure which realises value from waste and returns it in various forms to the community and to council tax payers, rather than exporting it to shareholders."
The CRN UK also welcomes the Government's proposal to introduce specific re-use credits, which will operate on the same principles as the recycling credits scheme. "The credit will, we feel, not only incentivise re-use activity, but also ensure good data capture," says Andy Moore.
But the organisation is disappointed that the Government feels it is an inappropriate time to consider introducing waste minimisation credits. "Given the Strategy Unit suggestion we expected this consultation to extend to full consideration of the matter," says Andy Moore."The members of the community sector, particularly those promoting home composting, have some ideas on how waste minimisation credits might work. The CRN UK would like to have discussed this more fully prior to the consultation, and we can't help feeling that an opportunity might have been missed here. We want DEFRA to engage with our sector on this subject. There may well be ways forward, and given the difficulty of engaging with waste minimisation experienced so far, finding any sort of leverage to progress would be a prize to celebrate."
ENDS
Notes for editors:
The Community Recycling Network UK is a national umbrella organisation for more than 300 community groups, co-operatives and not-for-profit businesses in the community waste sector. Its aim is to promote community-based recycling as the most effective way of tackling the UK's growing waste problem. Its members have achieved some of the highest recycling rates in the UK and offer separated kerbside recycling collections to two million households - eight per cent of the UK population.
The Community Recycling Network UK is based at Trelawney House, Surrey Street, Bristol, BS2 8PS, tel: 0117 942 0142. The CRN UK website is www.crn.org.uk.
For all media enquiries please contact:
Andy Nelmes, CRN UK Press Officer, 0117 908 0415 or 07949 626119, andyn@crn.org.uk