Memorandum by the Women's Environmental
Network
BACKGROUND
Women's Environmental Network (WEN) initiated
the Waste Minimisation Act 1998 which gave local authorities the
power to implement waste minimisation initiatives, as distinct
from recycling. In 1999 we published Shared Advantage which was
a series of suggestions for councils once the Act was in force.
For some time it was the only guidance in existence about the
Act, and Defra referred councils to it. As part of our Waste Prevention
campaign, which was funded until 2005 (with nappy waste prevention
work still ongoing) we also worked closely with a series of councils,
including Bath and East Somerset, West Sussex, Bexley, Enfield
and Tower Hamlets, where the office is based.
One of our projects—based around Spitalfields
Market in London—involved local businesses and helped them
publicise waste prevention initiatives such as reusing carrier
bags and other containers to their customers. We set up a mutually
beneficial arrangement between the nearby city farm and the market
where food waste would be sent direct to compost. Some of the
local businesses undertook extra initiatives, such as offering
refills of liquid goods, and discounts for returning other packaging.
We used the lessons from this project to feed into our national
campaigning work.
In 2000, at the request of Michael Meacher MP,
then Environment Secretary, we wrote a list of 25 practical suggestions
for local authorities for ways to prevent waste.
Many of these ideas are extremely simple and
practical, but demand a very different way of looking at things:
where waste prevention—as distinct from recycling—is
prioritised.
Some initiatives, such as publicising repair
shops in a given borough, may each save only small amounts of
waste but can be instrumental to creating shifts in attitudes
(and are reinforcing local services and employment). As with all
community work, this way of affecting behaviour change is time-consuming
but eventually rewarding.
In each policy consultation we responded to,
we reiterated the importance of prevention at source. At the time
(five years ago), waste prevention was still rarely addressed.
These days, the heightened public awareness in environmental issues—and
especially the clear consumer aversion to over-packaging and plastic
bags bears out these arguments. Large manufacturers and retailers
have often used "consumer choice", and values of aesthetics,
hygiene and convenience as an excuse to over-package the things
they sell.
Our stance is that we must reduce the quantity
of waste overall, before even attempting to increase recycling
volumes, and current targets do not assist this.
WEN'S PERSPECTIVE
For WEN, the environment is no one single issue:
health, food, waste, homes and chemicals are all inextricably
interlinked. Just as environmental problems globally disproportionately
affect those with the fewest resources, so too, in the UK, the
effects of pollution and contamination (eg landfill sites and
incinerators) tend to be worst for, and nearest to, those communities
who are least well-off.
WEN campaigns for women and men but from a woman's
perspective—highlighting the specific ways in which women
are affected by environmental degradation and how they can participate
in positive change. We equip consumers with the information they
need to lobby supermarkets and politicians for change, produce
information briefings and give public talks.
We find that in practice people can be dismissive
of taking a gendered approach, but the relevance for the waste
prevention campaign is high:
— women tend to make the majority of
purchasing decisions in the home;
— women still tend to do the majority
of domestic tasks and as such are more affected by practical problems
such as excess packaging than men or children; and
— a huge amount of marketing is targeted
specifically at women.
We aim to positively affect environmental behaviour
and show that it is easier to take small steps to improve the
environmental quality of our lives. We have worked with the dairy
industry on promoting reusable glass bottles; with the jewellery
industry on promoting repairs, and with organic beauty companies
on providing safe, healthy cosmetics and refillable packaging.
We have always been aware of the need to think about what people
will do or buy if they are not consuming wasteful products: hence
an emphasis on services replacing products.
Like many charities our funding is not certain.
We are in the process of fundraising for a new positive campaign—with
the working title of "Live Life Don't Waste It", to
help raise awareness of what we define as waste and the environmental
cost of disposable products and to support and value alternatives.
WASTE REDUCTION
INQUIRY
WEN welcomes the emphasis of the House of Lords
inquiry on reducing waste as opposed to recycling, but asks whether
it could go even further and look at the issue of prevention at
source.
This is not merely an issue of semantics: it
is central to the whole way that our society currently deals with
waste—as a problem—rather than as a potential resource.
We want to effect a culture shift whereby we
value resources properly. Information alone is not enough. We
need to redefine what waste is, and build a much greater cultural
awareness of the things we dispose of and affect a change in consciousness—through
information talks and workshops, educational experiences such
as visits to landfill sites. Such measures would help increase
our understanding of the value of the things we consume—and
hence their worth when we have finished with them so that we can
use them in another form or pass them onto other people. By involving
people in discussions we would draw on the ideas and creativity
of others to spread enthusiasm and promote practical alternatives
and action.
In our real nappy project we raise awareness
about the environmental impact of nappies and encourage parents
and carers to use real nappies and hence minimise waste and the
impact on the environment. In our Real Nappies for London scheme,
we have worked with London Boroughs to incentivise the use of
real nappies. Feedback from the boroughs in the scheme is that
it has been far more straightforward than anticipated and a simple
but effective approach towards positively changing environmental
behaviour.
Another good case in point is the work that
the Bioregional Development Group are doing on "a reclamation-led
approach to construction". Through this work, they have concluded
that the current policy regime supports the use of recyclate more
than the reuse of other construction materials—in other
words it is cheaper to use recyclate even though this demands
greater energy consumption.
Waste prevention cuts to the heart of the economy
and questions the way we measure "progress". It calls
us urgently to replace our standards of economic growth with those
of quality of life. However, early steps can be taken without
conflict with economics, providing examples for the future.
One of the main barriers to this kind of shift
is an inability or unwillingness to look at things differently:
to be prepared to design out waste from the outset of projects;
and to use sustainability, rather than cost alone, as an overarching
decision-making framework. This kind of approach can of course
lead to cost savings, along with waste savings, later down the
line.
RECOMMENDATIONS
We recommend that:
— Waste prevention always be prioritised,
and separate from recycling (as such we welcome the indicator
in the Government's Waste Strategy for residual waste).
— A large scaling-up of resources put
into communication with communities to promote and publicise local
initiatives cutting out waste. There is great support for this
type of initiative, in our experience, and much more potential
to create change by working with small groups than to working
with individuals.
— Councils work more closely with local
businesses to promote waste prevention services in their community
(eg repair shops, low-packaged goods, refills, reuse, wood banks,
DIY demolition yards).
— Positive values such as cradle-to-cradle
design and zero waste are properly communicated and discussed
at community level with examples.
— Strategic initiatives such as WEN's
real nappy project and Bioregional Development Group's construction
work be given more attention and funding.
— Sector-wide waste prevention initiatives
with hospitals, schools, local authorities, shops, trains, markets
and festivals could build on best practice in recycling and involve
staff in finding practical solutions to reducing and preventing
waste. The direct experience of employees is vital to identifying
and solving specific problems and also to having enough buy-in
for organisational change.
— Central government be prepared to
promote initiatives which question consumerism and replace a vision
of growth with one of quality of life.
November 2007
| 
