A significant percentage of UK household waste is waste food.
Now it is true that better planning, better reuse can greatly reduce this. However only food that is uncooked can be put in a compost heap. The UK produces about 5 million tonnes of food waste year. If this was collected it could reduce emissions dramatically, as well as potentially creating significant biogas for power generation.
This is a situation where the government has sensible moves, however it now needs to put its money where it’s mouth is and moves this forwards. Without funding, this could end up failing and being shut down, like the government destroying the solar panel industry and it’s foolish early withdrawal all of its green housing Grant programme.
Despite various efforts over the last 10 years to make the conservative party look more green it doesn’t seem to have an impacts on government policy. Will the conservative party eventually see sense? Or will we not have sensible move on this front until another party comes to power? Things need to change; at the current time, only Conservatives and Labour have a chance of running the UK under our current system – and Labour lies far behind in the polls.
I have nothing against the Conservatives, and have supported them at different times. Unfortunately, even in the current time (where environmental devastation is a threat – without significant action) environmental pledges are far down the list of priorities for the voter, which means that political parties do not prioritize pledges. This needs to change, and it should be noted that while climate and environment are often lower priority for older generations, young and middle aged voters are more and more plugged in and frustrated by the lack of progress.
I would hope that it will soon be the case, that parties cannot be elected without a sensible environmental plan. Am I being to optimistic? I dont know, but I hope that the political parties will start to engage properly with the needs in the near future. Conservatives have once again floated aggressive cut plans, but there is no plan as to how to get there.