The government's ugly waste strategy

Global Action Plan's Trewin Restorick urges the government to rethink its approach to waste, and wonders if more companies will penalise frequent fliers

Last week saw the Environment Select Committee's assessment of the Government's waste strategy. It didn't make for pretty reading.

The main criticism of the report was that there is no coherent policy strategy in place to cut waste from the commercial and industrial sector, instead virtually all efforts have focused on the domestic sector, even though this contributes less than 10 per cent of overall waste.

This summary comes as no surprise. For the last few years the Government has been quietly disinvesting in all the waste support services for businesses, particularly small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), who need the support most.

This policy has seen the demise of Envirowise and no increase in WRAP's budget even though they have been asked to do more.

Global Action Plan currently employs eight people who are providing support to SMEs. Trying to secure funding to retain these posts is proving increasingly difficult as a result of Government policy.

Yet the demand for the service we provide is huge and the environmental savings they achieve are significant. Hopefully the report will force Government into a policy rethink and get them to concentrate their efforts on a sector which has a large environmental impact and which is desperately in need of help and guidance.
Food waste

The Select Committee also felt that the Government has not done enough to address the issue of food waste. It is estimated that the average family could save over £50 a month just by making the most of the food they buy.

One of the reasons for this is confusing labelling. Food that is labelled " best before" is still safe to eat until it reaches its "use by" date. It was reported this week that websites selling discounted groceries which are past their "best before" date are doing thriving business. For example, Approved Food reported 500 per cent year-on-year increase in sales and another site, Food Bargains was forced to apologise for delays in meeting orders due to the volume of demand.

Global Action Plan has realised the importance of food waste for many years. Our Appetite for Action project run in conjunction with Sky, educates primary school students about the environmental importance of food. Over 1,600 schools are now registered in this project and many celebrated Appetite for Action day on Friday.

Within our office we have a wormery and I have a sneaky suspicion that the worms are treated better than the staff. During the cold spell, I found myself signing payments for worm blankets, we have a worm rota and our next "lunch and learn" session has been renamed "lunch and worm" as staff are given the opportunity to learn the joys of looking after the wriggly wrigglers.

Collaboration

On Tuesday I met with one of the major environmental charities to discuss a possible collaborative project. Intuitively I know that we could achieve far more if we combined our resources and knowledge, but putting this belief into practice is not easy.

Collaboration requires complete trust and openness. This is particularly the case when you are a small organisation with limited resources and are planning to link with a large well-known charity. Will they take your expertise and processes and repackage them as their own or are they genuine about the collaboration?

These concerns may appall many who would say surely the greater good should over-ride such petty concerns. But we have spent 15 years painstakingly building an approach and expertise that we feel provides an important and different dimension to the environmental discussion and I feel a responsibility to ensure that we retain the social capital that we have created.

Low carbon communities

On Friday I did some filming for a video DECC is making for its new Low Carbon Communities initiative. The Government has so many low carbon initiatives that it is virtually impossible for the experts to understand how they fit together let alone a poor bemused household. The Low Carbon Community initiative is a brave attempt to bring all of these initiatives together into a coherent package within 20 test communities.

Personally, I think it is a great idea and is one of the few examples of a Department trying to put "joined-up thinking" into practice. Unfortunately, I think that DECC hasn't quite realised the significance of what it is developing and the initiative is being driven forward by a few under-resourced and passionate people.

To try to help them Global Action Plan has provided a secondee paid out of our own budget. I know that this is ridiculous given the size of our resources, but I would rather see the initiative succeed than fail due to bad decision-making.

Social norms

Last Friday ended with me receiving a fantastic email from Heather who works in our Climate Squad. A friend of hers was registering for some free WordWeb Pro software and was surprised to be asked how many flights a year he took.

On giving the information he then received the following message: "Sorry you can no longer use the free version. Under the licensing terms you agreed to when installing the programme, unlimited and free use of the programme is only available to people who fly very little."

It is the first time I have ever heard of such an approach, I wonder how many other companies will be brave enough to copy this idea?