It's show season again. Everyone comes out of their offices and heads off to places such as the Commercial Vehicle Show, CIWM and Saltex to see the latest developments in vehicle and grounds equipment technology.
As most of us have heard, there are going to be some changes in the way we deal with waste. As well as Environment Secretary David Milliband's new strategy influenced by calls from local authorities, the Government is also launching a parallel public consultation on removing the ban on local authorities introducing financial incentives for recycling. Soon, any such schemes will have to return all revenues back to local residents.
The main points of Milliband's strategy include:
• More effective incentives for individuals and businesses to recycle waste, leading to at least 40% of household waste recycled or composted by 2010, rising to 50% by 2020. This is a significant increase on the targets in the previous waste strategy, published in 2000;
• A greater responsibility on businesses for the environmental impact of their products and operations through, for example, a drive to minimise packaging and higher targets for recycling packaging;
There will also be a new national target to help measure this ' to reduce the amount of household waste not reused, recycled or composted from 22.2 million tonnes in 2000 to 12.2 million tonnes by 2020 ' a reduction of 45%.
The question for LAs is how are we going to implement all this? Luckily the technology has been available for ages and is well reported on in this magazine.
