
Tuesday, December 31st - 2024
By: Helena Horton Environment reporter
Seven local authorities in England have waste figures highlighted as government launches circular economy measures
New government data published on Monday showed that 95% of non-recycled waste in Essex is sent to landfill, as ministers launched their plans for a circular economy.
The data revealed that seven local authorities in England reported sending more than 40% of their residual waste to landfill in 2022 to 2023, with Essex county council at the top of the list.
Next came Cambridgeshire county council, (87% of waste sent to landfill), Southend borough council (74%), Darlington borough council (61%), Lancashire county council (59%), Leicester city council (57%) and Newcastle upon Tyne city council (56%).
At present, non-recyclable waste is either incinerated for energy or sent to landfill.
But as the population grows, the way packaging is used and made needs to change in order to reduce the amount of waste sent to landfill. This includes making it more recyclable and using less of it.
Ministers have announced a suite of plans to encourage a circular economy, including simpler recycling in England, so that less waste is sent to landfill or incinerated.
Other plans include a deposit returns scheme for plastic bottles, and charging manufacturers for producing too much waste using a “polluter pays” principle. This would incentivise producers to sell products in recycled and recyclable packaging.
In July, government targets were set which would require local authorities to send, on average, no more than 10% of municipal waste to landfill by 2035.
On Monday, as part of the circular economy strategy, a plan was announced to crack down on new incinerators and incentivise recycling instead. Almost half of all waste (49%) collected by local authorities in 2022-23 was incinerated, with just 40% recycled.
But the plans come against a backdrop of falling recycling rates, according to the latest data. In 2021, the household recycling rate was 44.1%, falling to 43.4% in 2022.
The new strategy will make it harder to get planning permission for incinerators. In order to build them, developers will have to demonstrate that their projects help lower the amount of non-recyclable waste sent to landfill or enable the replacement of older, less efficient plants.
Developers will also need to ensure new projects are built carbon-capture ready, once the requirements come into force, and show how they will make use of the heat they produce, which could be used to decarbonise other sectors. Incineration facilities provide about 3% of the UK’s energy generation.
The circular economy minister, Mary Creagh, said: “For far too long, the nation has seen its recycling rates stagnate and has relied on burning household waste, rather than supporting communities to keep resources in use for longer.
“That ends today, with clear conditions for new energy from waste plants – they must be efficient and support net zero and our economic growth mission, before they can get the backing needed to be built.
“This is another vital step on the pathway to a circular economy, where we reduce waste to landfill and boost the economy, while also ensuring those facilities maximise the benefits to communities. This will also help us deliver on our Plan for Change in a decade of national renewal.”
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by Elizabeth Ouzts, Energy News Network
When a solar energy developer approached Halifax County, North Carolina, in the early 2010s about renting its former airfield in Roanoke Rapids, community leaders had a condition.
“If they were willing to lease this land for the very first solar project in the area, the county needed to get something back in return,” said Mozine Lowe from her office, which overlooks the 20 megawatt solar farm now atop the old airport. “What they got was this building.”
Of course, it’s more than a building. It’s the headquarters for the Center for Energy Education, the nonprofit Lowe has run since 2016 that works to maximize the benefits of large solar farms in rural America — one community, one school child, and one worker at a time.
Lowe, who grew up about five miles from where she now works, had graduated from Greensboro’s North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University but worked across the country, from California to Washington, D.C.
When she returned to this rural county of less than 50,000 near the Virginia border, formerly a hub of farming and textiles, she said she didn’t see a lot of change.
“The jobs were the same,” she said. “I didn’t see people making the connection between solar energy and what’s happening with the climate and the impact on rural communities, and I just wanted to try and help from that angle.”
The Center conducts educational programs for children of all ages, who come in by the busload from surrounding schools both public and private. It holds a Solar Fest every year to celebrate clean energy with community leaders, drawing hundreds.
Through collaborations with local educational institutions like community colleges, the center has also helped to train a new workforce in jobs that pay roughly twice what workers are earning at the fast-food chains off Interstate 95.
“We have trained more people than most other people around here to become solar installers,” Lowe said. “We want them to be first in line for our jobs.”
And there’s outreach to solar companies themselves in North Carolina as well as Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana, where the Center also has offices. The goal is to help them become better community partners.
Geenex, the Charlotte-based developer who built the solar farm at the airport and over a dozen others in the vicinity, is still involved in the Center, and the company’s chairman also chairs the nonprofit’s board.
But Lowe and other staff at the organization say not every solar developer is committed — at least at first — to working with community leaders in Eastern North Carolina.
“Geenex is a very good partner,” said Reginald Bynum, the Center’s community outreach manager. “They’re a good player. But there are only a few of them. Other companies will say, ‘This is your ordinance? Great. This is all I have to do.’”
Some county ordinances, like that in Halifax, need to be updated, Bynum said. Many still call for a 75-foot buffer between the rows of solar panels and neighboring properties. That figure is “so 2018,” said Bynum. It should be doubled, he said.
Most solar farms are also built on private land — often bits of farmland that can help cotton growers and other farmers guarantee income. But developers usually obtain the leases first, before airing the project in public.
“That’s the backwards process of solar,” Bynum said. “They’re talking to landowners and securing that land, and then they’re coming to commissioners.”
What’s more, simply following ordinances isn’t enough, Bynum says. What’s needed is for solar developers to work with local residents to develop community benefits agreements — documents that memorialize pluses to the area, from minimizing construction impacts to providing jobs.
By: Hanaa Siddiqi - Sustainable Times
Charities across the UK have lauded the government’s announcement of £15 million in funding to redirect surplus food to those in need. This initiative, expected to save up to 60 million meals, marks a critical step toward reducing food waste and combating hunger.
According to government estimates, approximately 330,000 tonnes of edible food are wasted or repurposed as animal feed before it leaves UK farms every year. The newly confirmed fund, originally pledged by Rishi Sunak in February 2024 but delayed by the general election, aims to address this inefficiency.
The funding will empower charities that redistribute surplus food, many of which lack the resources to collect it from farms and distribute it to needy communities. The money can be used to purchase essential equipment like balers or hoppers to handle bulky food items, invest in new technology, or provide training for additional staff.
The Felix Project and FareShare, two prominent charities addressing food waste and hunger, have welcomed the funding. They emphasised its potential to move the UK closer to becoming a zero-waste society.
Charlotte Hill, the Felix Project’s chief executive, said it is a “scandal to see food grown on UK farms going to waste, especially given the increasing number of people experiencing food insecurity”.“This £15m funding has the potential to unlock huge supplies of healthy and nutritious produce and help the Felix Project deliver even more meals in 2025”, she added.
“The Felix Project found 1 in 8 working London families use a food bank every week to help feed their children. We deliver to around 1,200 community organizations, all working hard to feed people living with food insecurity, but the demand is so much more.
“We have a long waiting list of organisations desperately wanting food, but we do not have it to give.”
The funding comes amid a sustained increase in the demand for food banks across the UK. The Trussell Trust, a leading anti-poverty charity, reported a 37% rise in food parcel distribution between 2021/22 and 2022/23, with a further 4% increase in 2023/24.
In a joint statement from Ms Hill and FareShare’s chief executive Kris Gibbon-Walsh, the two charities said: "After years of campaigning by food redistribution charities, we are thrilled to see this fund come to fruition.
“We are pleased that the government has recognised that too much food goes to waste on our farms and that it should be redistributed to feed people who need it."
They added: "We look forward to acting quickly with the government, the charity sector, and farmers to maximise the impact of this initiative during British growing season, ensuring surplus food reaches as many people as possible.
“We have a proven model which funds farmers to redistribute their unsold food, which means that together, we can take meaningful steps toward achieving a zero-waste Britain."
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The killer whale mother, who made headlines with her display of grief in 2018, has given birth again. But researchers have some worries for her new offspring.
Tahlequah, an orca who carried around the body of her dead calf for more than two weeks in what experts called a show of grief, has given birth again.
One of the Southern Resident orcas of the Pacific Northwest, Tahlequah made headlines around the world in 2018 when she swam with her deceased offspring’s body on her head for 17 days in what many saw as a heartbreaking spectacle. The infant female had died within a half hour of birth, and her mother swam with the body for an estimated 1,000 miles.
Around two years later, the killer whale mother gave birth to a healthy and playful male calf.
However, researchers are worried about the health of her latest offspring. On Christmas Eve, the Center for Whale Research confirmed on social media that a new female calf spotted with Tahlequah’s pod in the Puget Sound area was hers.
The Washington state nonprofit said that a research team that included “multiple experienced killer whale researchers” has “expressed concern about the calf’s health” based on the behavior of both the calf and her mother. However, the center expressed hope for the young animal, noting that Tahlequah is an “experienced mother.”
Tahlequah is known to researchers as J35, indicating her status as a member of a pod of orcas designated J Pod. Her new calf has been dubbed J61. The mother became widely known as “Tahlequah” after she was given the name by the Whale Museum in Washington state through its “adopt an orca” program.
Prior to her calf dying in 2018, Tahlequah gave birth in 2010 to a surviving male calf, J47. According to the nonprofit Orca Conservancy, the calf she had in 2020, called J57, is often seen playing with his older brother.
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