Great Britain’s Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) is proposing a zero waste policy in an effort to cut back on greenhouse gas emissions and landfill usage which would ban all food and food scraps, cans, paper, and glass items from being deposited in land fills. Violators of the ban will be fined.

Environment Minister Hilary Benn is hosting a “waste summit” in order to develop the details necessary to achieve the very strict goal of a zero waste policy. Why, you may ask — “Because does it make sense to put food into landfill? No it doesn't," Benn offers.

It doesn’t? As food scraps are organic and biodegradeable, banning food and food scraps from landfills then becomes a curious idea. Except that there are other plans afoot to collect the food scraps separately, to be used to generate electricity. This can only be accomplished by using updated technology and plenty of taxpayer money to install the proper generators for a process that is still not yet cost-effective and fraught with various glitches.

To handle the British government’s latest scheme, there may be as many as five different wheeling bins and recycling boxes issued per household for the task of enabling homeowners to become compliant with the new directives: Compost — grass clippings, garden wastes, and cardboard, (oddly enough); Food — all cooked and uncooked scraps; Recyclables — glass, plastic, cans, aluminum foil, clothes, shoes, batteries; Paper — clean paper, shredded paper, envelopes with plastic windows removed, telephone directories; Landfill — pet litter, diapers, drink cartons, plastic caps and lids, various packaging, toothpaste tubes, and foam.

Matthew Elliott, of the TaxPayers' Alliance, said, “Voters are sceptical about recycling policy. The Government should sort out the current recycling policy before starting on new barmy ideas.” Adding, “The fact that food waste could be banned from landfill — effectively treating it as a kind of toxic waste — is a recipe for disaster.”

There were no specifics available as to the overall cost of such an undertaking, and how much of a bureaucracy would be needed to oversee and enforce the policy — £1,000 per violation — not to mention the effect on the global environment of producing all those plastic bins and containers, along with the urban blight such containers pose, disfiguring neighborhoods, floating around from location to location, convenient and favorite targets for arson in crime-ridden areas.

There are few who have little problem with reducing real waste in an ever increasing materialistic and consumeristic society; most believe, in theory at least, in good stewardship of the Earth and its resources. But what citizens are really hankering after, both in Great Britain and in the United States, is a zero waste policy applied to government, letting competition and free enterprise handle the trash.

It is excessive government that is most wasteful; thick bureaucracies and a multiplication of public agencies marked with corruption and abuse are the real wasters of money and resources, as these disregard private enterprise and individual freedom and responsibility.

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RP said:

Land fills Food scraps? Didn't their mothers teach them to eat everything on their plates? They never heard "never take more than you can eat"? And what about all those poor, starving children in Africa? I have nothing against recycling, but doesn't REUSE make more sense? Why sell milk in a disposable single use container when we could be using reusable glass? Same thing for sodas, etc. When I was a kid, we reused egg cartons. When an appliance broke, we repaired it. When my parents were first married, they bought a used refrigerator. When they died 48 years later, the same refrigerator was still in use on the back porch. When we bought feed for our animals, it came in cloth sacks, not paper. The empty cloth sacks then became clothes. When the clothes wore out, the material was used again as rags and towels for cleanup. Now we use stuff for a short time and send it to the landfill.

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October 13, 2009
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Lee Gonzales said:

Recycling has been going on before the "Greenies" arrived with their total government "solution." I remember the brown paper bag that mom packed our school lunche in and told us not to throw the bag away. The record holder in our home was my older sister who kept hers still useable for two weeks! No government needed to tell sis to recycle. Mom did the ordering! Yes milk seemed to taste better in glass containers but the milk packers decided that cardboard containers were more economical. Under a strong economy there would be room for companies to sell their products in glass, cardborad and plastic. The decision to recycle would be left up to consumers and government would stay out of mom's way. The recycling mania is shifting into high gear in "green" states like Oregon and California. But you have to wonder how many hours out of each month people spend separating glass, aluminum, and cardboard? How much time is spent driving to unsightly and trash-strewn dump recycle centers? The recyling mania is creating environmental fanaticism; the constant hammering into the American psyche that we are running out of energy. The people who visit this site often know that that is not the case. Geologists have proven that our country is chock-full of oil, coal, and natural gas. Add to this the virtually endless source of electrical energy from nuclear power. Yet Americans are being turned into a pack rat collection society. Let's free up America's incredible energy abundance and quit fiddling around with empty milk cartons while the frozen moonscape of ANWR sits unexplored!

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October 13, 2009
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Ellen Christine Smith said:

Some Canadian provinces doing this already... I've lived in Prince Edward Island in eastern Canada, since just before 9/11. The smallest Canadian province adopted a mandatory, comprehensive recycling and composting program quite a few years ago, as did its neighbouring province, Nova Scotia. When each province adopted these programs, most of the resistance came from retirees, which makes good sense, as a good deal of them are infirm or at least compromised, and having to lug heavy, awkward, containers to the curbside each week at first appeared to be rather a formidable task. But here we are, quite a few years in and the biggest problems are odour issues. The complaints about inconvenience have more or less died out. One strange development has been a stubborn resistance of the Island's farmers to purchasing composted fertilizer which is made from what gets tossed in the green containers each week. They say the cost is too high. So something has gone wrong as this was one of the incentives for putting the program in place. Otherwise, this small province, with a population of just over 140,000 -- yes, you read it correctly the first time -- needs to get a pat on its back from the rest of the world. If little P.E.I., Anne's Land, can do it, surely everyone else can! My hat's off to the Brits for endeavoring to put such a program in place. Perhaps policy makers need to take a little glance at how it can be successfully implemented, by visiting the little Island just above Nova Scotia, cradled in the waves!

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October 13, 2009
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Lee Gonzales said:

It's a dead end, stinking project Ellen. The old folks are right. Quit fiddling around with empty milk cartons while the frozen moonscape of ANWR sits unexplored! America- that includes little ol Nova Scotia needs energy not a government mandated trash collection program. The Canadian national government and the governments in the provinces are being run by nuts and idiots. http://www.gov.ns.ca/ Forget recyling and get the government nuts and idiots out of office or you are going to freeze in the dark.

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October 13, 2009
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bg said:

	To Mr. Gonzales...re the nuts and idiots That is the type of recycling we need to have!!
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October 14, 2009
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