Forum topic: There's no such place as 'Away'

Just to add a little to Rem’s characteristically thoughtful and insightful video.
The video’s focus is local authority collected waste (LACW). That is a minority, albeit significant, chunk of the waste we are all ultimately responsible for. Of the big streams, commercial, demolition and excavation have very high recycling (effectively circular economy) rates; commercial and industrial streams have a way to go, but again recycling rates are noticeably better than LACW.
As he emphasises, this is not a flick a switch and we change the waste-world issue. It is two decades since I went along to hear Michael Braungart outline the circular economy (Cradle to Cradle) to an influential audience and I guess a decade or so since the Ellen MacArthur foundation has been championing the same. And yet here we still are.
Like many things, smoking, cars(?), I guess we need a carrot and stick approach to really change behaviour but certainly as he points out the big systematic change needs to come at government / big co level. Virgin material is typically cheaper than recyclate and polluter doesn’t pay. But until then we can still all focus on less stuff, use the existing circular economies such as composting, fibre board (those Amazon boxes have roughly a 12-use lifetime), glass and more, as well as reusing and repurposing.
Crucially he mentions there will be ultimate residual waste, to be either landfilled or incinerated, however technically advanced we get - think of the non-trivial volumes of street sweepings (part of LACW) for instance; he doesn’t mention that incineration is inevitably the cheapest financial option, and so a possible voter hurdle.
While statute means the seven boroughs must send their residual waste to the NLWA, recyclate is different and uniquely Enfield does not use the NLWA for this stream. Any implication is perhaps worthy of a session in its own right. I’ve always wondered.
Two final points, both related to the importance of being in early with issues. There is now a lot of hot under the collar councillor activity regarding incineration. That certainly wasn’t evident in 2015/16, nor when Enfield councillors, along with the other boroughs, voted not to use the London apportionment for sizing waste facility needs but rather the subsequent and much higher (and subsequently discredited) NLWA forecasts. That decision was massively influential in the scale of plant now intended. And for all I would emphasise the effort to engage in consultation – the issues of scale, air quality and climate (and sustainable travel means for waste transport) have not changed since the first proposal, only the numbers of residents now interested. Far better that had been at the time. On that, Enfield is currently consulting on the next budget cycle and the GLA on framework matters for the next London Plan. The latter has a big transport theme, as with the last one, far better influence early than get angry when things are pretty much too late.