Knowing that the government has it wrong on waste

I'll issue a warning now - I think this is going to turn into a rant.

Iain Dale is complaining about too much Nanny State-ism, and he is of course right. None of us like being told what to do.

But the story that he is reporting is very concerning for other reasons - and it's to do with the way that we target waste.

In Cheshire East we are trying to remove as much biodegradable waste from landfill as possible. This is because it's what the government wants us to do - and the story by Dale reflects this from another angle.

But this seems crazy to me - and I think we're wrong.

The way we target waste is crackers. If you are worried that your hole in the ground is getting too full (as we all are) then you concern yourself with how much volume you put in, not how much weight. But this is all driven by LATS/Landfill Tax which is based on weight - and there's nothing we can do about that locally.

That's why MBC won't collect my plastic - because it's not dense enough to make a dent in the figures.

But this thing about biodegradable waste is more crackers still. It's utterly Jacobs Cream Crackers. Dig a hole and put as much plant waste in it as you want. It's not going to contaminate land, it's not going to end the world, and it isn't going to give of anymore CO2 than the plant absorbed whilst it was growing - which makes it carbon neutral.

Using large amounts of energy or draconian laws to recycle, reuse or reduce this kind of waste is pointless. Surely plastic, which is made from oil and is the only substance know by man to be full of more chemical nasties than turkey twizzlers, is the kind of stuff we want to reduce & recycle?