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How to
Why
Barriers
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Legislation- DEFRA
We have some of the most Draconian legislation in Europe for composting. Especially the ABPO. In Austria for instance they compost catering waste in open windrows and have never had a foot-in-mouth outbreak. (It’s the food system not the composting that’s the problem) In Flanders the local Authorities offer compost bins for kitchen waste or chickens to eat it up! Here if you keep chickens you have to keep your compost well away from the chickens. (Doesn’t seem to stop all the farmers I know throwing their scraps out on the muckheap for the chickens to scratch at!)
Even though the ABPR/O recognises that landfill carries a much higher risk than incineration – still it is composting that has to go through the rigorous SVS risk assessment not landfill!
Having now to deal with both SVS and E A
Waste exemption legislation – badly drafted originally. A nightmare to rewrite, an age to come out and with associated costs – see below.
Site – Environment Agency
Risk assessment – still a lack of consistency from officers to understand what community composting is all about – tend to get quoted the 250 metre ‘rule’ and that’s it. We don’t disagree that a risk assessment is needed – but it is often used as a very big sledgehammer to crack a very small nut.
Bio-aerosols – The EA and DEFRA go on about bio-aerosols but seem happy to truck materials around in diesel trucks with their associated bioaerosol particulate emissions. Also there is a distinct lack of properly validated independent research in this area.
Proposed charges – very likely to kill off existing groups or stop new ones.
Site - Planners
Planners now asking for money for community composting sites for 'change of use’ – they echo most of the Environment Agency risk assessment – see sledgehammer comments above.
Householders.
- Changing attitudes. There is a ‘them and us’ mentality ‘why don’t the Council do something about it?’ The problems facing society are for all of us to get involved with and compostable materials take up the largest fraction of the dustbin. Householders have to learn to co-operate with new (and old) systems designed to eliminate all compostables form the waste stream. They are only likely to do this when they see Government and local Authorities really doing their utmost to support individual efforts. There needs to be a massive PR and media effort in this regard – to promote composting (and compost use) on all levels – the Treasury needs to give back some of the 80% landfill tax money here.
Community Composters
Lack of ‘capacity’ to take on more work – to develop their projects, (the size of sites and the number of people that can be employed by a project.). This is partly a fault of the system. Compost is not valued highly enough – its difficult to generate enough income from just compost – and projects need support form their local Authorities in the form of services (shredding for instance) and recycling credits. They also need core funding support – which is so difficult to obtain from funding bodies.
Trade versus Domestic
So often I find in conversations about the most sensible solution to a ‘waste’ problem gets bogged down in the fact that one stream can get recycling credits because it’s domestic or municipal waste whereas the other cannot. This can make it difficult, for instance to come up with the right mix for a compost project – the domestic catering waste can’t be amended with the sawmill chippings.
Contractors/contracts
The whole system is not geared to the most sensible way to maximise resources. We are locked into archaic ways of thinking which are still thinking about ‘waste’ rather than how to get most value from society’s discards. The system is underpinned by waste contractors who are basically truckers paid by the tonne of material they dispose of. Now if they were paid for disposing of less……
Funders – Funders – set criteria in ways, which make it difficult for projects to apply for money – insisting that the new initiative ups the tonnage, for instance, or insisting that this is a completely new initiative. They force projects to reinvent themselves rather than offering ‘core’ support. Or they just produce baffling and incomprehensible forms.
Landfill tax credit scheme
- This was ‘reformed’ very badly – now almost impossible to get hold of. I cannot access anything for a brilliant project – just because of location.
Local Authorities
Collection (District) vs disposal (County) – This lack of ‘joined upness’ is not conducive to sensible strategies.
Recycling credits – when Local Authorities pay these out to third parties it can really help core fund community composting groups. Here in Devon we are blessed not only with recycling credits but also ‘joined up’ Local Authorities who meet and work together practically and strategically. Local Authorities in some parts of the Country do not communicate nearly so well with the grassroots community groups and do very little – if anything to help encourage community composting.
Contracts. These can also wipe out or forestall community activities.
Introduction of kitchen and garden waste collections. Although it is undoubtedly sensible to collect Kitchen waste mixing it with garden waste not only adds on an extra waste stream but it alos 'contaminates' the whole load mening it has toi be expensively processed in an 'In vessel' facility.
It does inevitably also act against community & home composting initiatives.
Government
Money – They expect more to be done without offering more core funds. Needs to be more debate on ‘waste’ and resources – to be moved up the political agenda – taken far more seriously.
Landfill Tax. With 80% of the landfill tax being taken off by the treasury and the remaining 20% difficult to get hold of it does not go where it really should. Government funding for Composting, Reuse and recycling has been lamentable. Local Authorities have to bid for money, groups have to apply for funding from tightly controlled pots of money that are generally concerned with upping tonnage’s diverted from landfill – Joined up Departments. Composting gives a whole range of community benefits. Projects are involved with getting people into the culture of work – with giving therapy to recovering addicts or mentally ill people etc. This in turn can have an impact on crime (thieving to feed a habit for instance)
Home composting - how about counting waste minimisation from home composting for instance towards waste targets. At least initiatives like WRAP can go some way to redressing this anomaly and hopefully in time it will be possible to include figures from home composting to count towards diversion targets.
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