Alan Whitehead

Labour Party | Southampton Test

‘WASTE IS A VALUABLE RESOURCE’ SAYS WHITEHEAD

Dr Alan Whitehead, MP for Southhampton Test has called for Britain to take radical new steps to move away from landfill and instead make use of biodegradable waste as an energy source.

Speaking at the South East England Development Agency (SEEDA) Waste Summit Dr Whitehead claimed that the challenge for municipal and commercial waste disposal has changed in recent years –from merely getting rid of household and industrial waste, to transforming it into a new resource. He praised the British people for reacting well to the challenge of recycling, saying that the ‘the public...are beginning to appreciate just why it is so important.’

Dr Whitehead is the Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Sustainable Waste Group. He reported that recycling and composting of household waste has quadrupled in the last ten years and that the amount of waste going into landfill has fallen by 20% in the municipal sector, and by 14% amongst commercial producers.

However, the Southampton MP also pointed out that ‘we are still the country in Europe most addicted to burying our waste’ and called for money raised from landfill levies to go into funding municipal and business recycling projects.

Crucially, Dr Whitehead deplored the 7.5 million tones of wood, mostly from construction which goes into landfill in the UK each year, but which could be used for biomass power schemes, as could other forms of biodegradable waste.

He stated:

‘Personally, I would put measures in place simply to ban wood from entering landfill, as has happened in Germany’.

Dr Whitehead further argued that it was essential to build on the clear shift in public attitudes in order to make recycling a way of life, explaining that ‘there is a long way to go’ in this endeavour due to the need to construct facilities for the production of energy from biomass.

However Dr Whitehead is convinced that making this way of dealing with waste the norm is imperative, adding:

 ‘If you believe that you can throw anything you like away, then you will not see the connection between you and the anaerobic digester that someone is proposing to build in your neighbourhood.’