The call for an Office for Resource Management has got louder with a report from the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) the latest to join the chorus.
Echoing the call earlier in the week from EEF – the Manufacturers’ Organisation, IPPR has called for the creation of the Office for Resource Management in it’s The Wasteline: Redefining ‘Waste’ and Improving Resource Management Policy report.
Sponsored by the Resource Association, the report recommends that an Office for Resource Management should be established within Defra. It says it should be staffed by secondees from industry and other Government departments, and should be tasked with increasing our understanding of how resources are used in the UK, and facilitating a cultural change in their use and reuse.
It also calls for an ease of regulation over food labeling to reduce food waste including scrapping the ‘best before’ label and only having the ‘use by’ label. Along with this, the report suggests that all English food businesses should take reasonable steps to separate food waste.
The report also calls for financial penalties for sending waste to landfill. It said: “With recycling rates slowing and the economy recovering from the longest recession in the UK’s history, there is a case for reinstating policy certainty. The Treasury should consider gradually increasing the financial penalties for sending ‘waste’ to landfill in the next parliament, once the economy recovery has been established.”
Its final policy recommendation is that the Treasury should launch a consultation to find the most effective means of reducing incineration which imposes the lowest burden on business and local authorities.
This would include an examination of the costs and benefits of introducing a fiscal incentive to reduce incineration, of introducing regulations to ban specific materials to incineration and of doing nothing.
View the full report at http://www.ippr.org/assets/media/publications/pdf/the-wasteline-waste+resource-management_Jul2014.pdf