Campaigners urge Cameron to talk half as much rubbish

After a period of very little campaigning on waste and recycling issues, we were eager to take the opportunity to join in with a Friends of the Earth campaigning day of action, taking place nationwide. The Government’s Waste Review of English waste policy is soon to be published, setting out their goals for 2014-2020. Friends of the Earth saw this as an opportunity to tell the Prime Minister what we want him to include in the Review – and urging him to keep his promise of leading ‘The Greenest Government ever’.

We set out ready for a media stunt in Albert Square in the city centre, using the town hall as our backdrop for the photos. With one campaigner dressed as David Cameron and several others in FoE t-shirts we had lots of fun with the props ensuring the photos sent a clear message. Rather than the usual focus on increasing recycling targets, this action focused on residual ‘black bag’ waste, calling on the Government to halve the amount of non-recyclable rubbish by 2020. This will reward waste prevention, reuse and recycling and reduce councils’ spending on expensive incineration or landfill.

People in Greater Manchester are keen to get the rubbish out of their bins – and we’re all frustrated by having to bin unnecessary packaging and the stuff that the council doesn’t recycle. More recycling is not only better for the environment, it will also mean hundreds of new jobs across Greater Manchester and lower waste disposal costs for our cash-strapped councils. We want local authorities to be able to recycle and re-use more of our household waste and for more products to be designed to be easy to re-use and recycle.

It was a campaign by Friends of the Earth that brought the Household Waste Recycling Act into law in 2003. This law means that we can all recycle from our doorsteps now – but there are still vast differences in the materials that we can recycle depending on our postcode. According to the 2009/10 figures from Defra, Greater Manchester currently recycles just over a third (33.8%) of rubbish and the Greater Manchester Waste Disposal Authority runs a re-use service for furniture and other household items. The best in Europe are achieving 70%+ recycling rates – so we’ve a long way to go.