1. Waste not, want not

Last week (2 August), the House of Lords European Union Committee launched a new inquiry into the EU’s contribution to food waste prevention.

It is estimated that up to 89 million tonnes of food is wasted in Europe every year, which amounts to 180 kilogrammes of food thrown away by everybody in the EU.

The committee will look at the progress the European Commission has made toward its target of halving food waste in Europe by 2020, and is inviting written evidence on the issue by 27 September 2013.

Some of its questions include:

• Why is food waste a significant issue to be tackled and how does it fit with wider objectives of sustainable, inclusive and smart economic growth?
• How should food waste be defined and how can it be monitored?
• What are the principle causes of food waste in the EU? What role can EU regulation and guidance play in preventing it?
• What economic drivers are in place to prevent food waste? What further efforts would be desirable?
• How realistic is the commission’s aspiration to halve food waste by 2020?
• What are the economic, social and environmental implications of food waste prevention?

Baroness Scott, Chair of the House of Lords EU Sub-Committee on Agriculture, Fisheries, Environment and Energy, said: “The European Commission has set an ambitious target to reduce food waste.

“Our inquiry will look at what can be done to help prevent food waste, what the economic impact of significant reduction in food waste would be and how we can ensure any reduction in the wastage of food is measured accurately.”

2. Oxfordshire recycling pledge

Oxfordshire councils are challenging residents to make a pledge to ‘recycle one more thing’ in the hopes of increasing the current recycling rate of 60 per cent.

In return for making a pledge, residents will be entered into a prize draw, with an annual family pass to Blenheim Palace up for grabs. The pledge promotion will run for 6 months, with a winner being drawn every month.

Councillor David Dodds, chair of the Oxfordshire Waste Partnership, said: “We are very proud that we are currently the top performing county in the country for recycling, however we are hoping our residents can show they can do even better and keep us at the top of the league. Recycling as much as possible is extremely important both for financial as well as environmental reasons, as it costs around £1,000 for every lorry load of waste [we] bury in a landfill site.”

Heather Carter, Head of Operations at Blenheim Palace, added: “Blenheim Palace is delighted to support this campaign; we take recycling very seriously and currently recycle over 80 per cent of the waste produced onsite including all food waste.”

Pledges can be made online, at various road shows, or by post.

3. People’s Design Lab event

Example workshop at Cranfield University

On 13 August, The People’s Design Lab will hold a workshop at Loughborough University, where people will have the chance to find new solutions for badly designed products: those that are unrecyclable, built to break or not economic to repair.

The workshop will build on the work done earlier in July at Cranfield University, where topics discussed included:

• how to reduce the need to print (e.g. by using electronic tickets);
• how food could be attractively marketed without resorting to difficult to recycle black plastic packaging; and
• alternatives to using large plastic packaging as a means to prevent theft (e.g. of razor blades or computer memory sticks).

There are a number of small bursaries to help members of small groups with travel costs, and people can get involved in the debate online.

4. Student ‘waste’ raises £16,000 for charity

Nine tonnes of unwanted items have been collected from students in Bristol and converted into over £16,000 for charity.

The University of Bristol’s annual ‘Big GIVE’ collection scheme, organised in partnership with Bristol University’s sustainability department, UBU Volunteering, and Bristol Hub, ensures that unwanted items, often dumped at the end of term, are donated to charity. This year, the scheme covered 15 university-owned halls and six Unite properties.

The scheme ran alongside the ‘The Summer Student Clear Out’ – a campaign to target private lets across the city – in partnership with UWE Bristol and Bristol City Council. The campaigns reached over 5,000 students.

The content of the thousands of charity bags collected is predicted to raise over £16,000 for 12 different charities, including St Peter’s Hospice, The Salvation Army, and the British Heart Foundation.

Bristol University donated 1,116 bags to the British Heart Foundation, which will raise £9,151 for the charity’s research.

Elena Lynch, Bristol Hub Manager (pictured above with with volunteers Sophie Ross, Naomi McKay and Rowan Cavendish), said: "It was great to see Bristol students taking the time and effort to donate to the Big Give. Instead of ending up in landfill, many of the items we collected will be used directly by people in need in Bristol.”

5. Biffa hosts BBC for filming of ‘Long Live Britain’

Dr Phil Hammond, Julia Bradbury & Phil Tufnell alert the nation about common health risks

As part of a new BBC One two-part series, Long Live Britain, Biffa provided a filming venue in an attempt to record the ‘biggest ever’ health screening.

The show is aimed at challenging the way we tackle three of Britain’s biggest preventable diseases: type two diabetes, cardiovascular disease and liver disease, which combined kill 200,000 and affect an estimated 11 million people each year.

Biffa’s materials recovery facility (MRF) at Edmonton was used to demonstrate the functioning of the liver by filtering wastes and toxins from the body.

Crissy Rock was one of the volunteers to be screened. Commenting on her experience, she said: “We all take care of how we look on the outside but before this programme, I’d never given a thought before to what’s going on to the inside of my body. If like me, this programme can make people take notice of their health, then it will be worth all the tears and all the trauma.”

Biffa’s Fran Tansley added: “We’re glad that Biffa could lend its support to raising awareness of these preventable diseases.”

6. Boost for St Peter’s recyclers

A new recycling ‘bring bank’ in St Peter on Jersey, put in place by Transport and Technical Services, opened last week (2 August).

The recycling facility at the rear of the St Peter Community Centre car park will provide banks for householders to recycle cardboard, paper, metal packaging, plastic bottles and batteries.

Glass recycling banks have not been provided as St Peter, along with the neighbouring parishes, provides regular household glass collections.

There are currently 19 mini recycling centres located around the island.

Transport and Technical Services Recycling Manager, Emma Richardson, said: "We are continually developing the network of recycling bring banks by trying to find new sites that are conveniently located on main routes across the island so that recycling is easy and can be combined with another journey. We hope that the new St Peter’s recycling bring bank will be a welcome facility for the nearby community.”

7. Waste management plan consultation extended

The Waste Management Plan for England consultation, which was opened this July by Defra, has been extended until 9 September.

A Defra spokesperson told Resource that due to the timing of the consultation falling in the middle of the summer holiday season, several people had written to Defra asking for more time to respond. As a result, the consultation has now been extended until September to accommodate those requests.

Developed in response to Article 28 of the EU’s revised Waste Framework Directive (rWFD), the plan must ‘set out an analysis of the current waste management situation’, bringing together the findings of government’s 2011 review on waste policy and ‘current policies under the umbrella of the one national plan’.

The consultation asks ‘anyone from any background’:

• whether the plan and waste planning policy will fulfil the obligations of the rWFD, as far as England is concerned;
• whether they agree with the conclusions of the Environmental Report (which appraises the ‘significant environmental impacts of the waste management plan’); and
• whether they agree that there are likely to be ‘no additional burdens for businesses, consumers and local authorities from adoption of the plan’.