Today I submitted the Green Group of Councillor’s response to East Sussex and Brighton & Hove’s Waste & Minerals Core Strategy – Preferred Options consultation. In essence this consultation is a request for input on what the officers’ preferred strategies for handling waste and minerals in the area should be.
This strategy is highly dependent on Brighton & Hove’s own Municipal Waste Strategy which was also recently consulted on. It’s still in draft form, we don’t know what the City’s final strategy will look like. This summer we submitted our views on that strategy too.
In my view both of the drafts are deeply lacking in ambition. We could be making serious financial savings as well as reaping major environmental benefits, by a far more aggressive approach to waste. Simple things like garden green waste collections would shift up to 10% of municipal waste into the recycling column.
The Government are slowly beginning to get tougher on waste too… better late than never. They will be offering funds for ‘Zero Waste Areas’ as well as planning to ban certain materials from landfill altogether. We should be jumping onto that – we should have done years ago – again, better late than never!
The Green Group Waste & Minerals response [PDF]
Aiming for Zero Waste: Green Group response to the Municipal Waste Strategy [PDF]
You can view the Waste & Minerals Core Strategy either on the East Sussex Consultation Portal or in there Brighton & Hove Cabinet meeting papers [PDF]. The City’s draft Municipal Waste Strategy can be viewed here.
UPDATE: We didn’t address the issue of land raise specifically in the response, but I want to make clear that we do oppose the proposed introduction of land raise sites for waste disposal — especially in sensitive parts of our countryside as implied by the report.
Jason Kitcat 