Sending our waste to landfill is increasingly expensive, and not sustainable. Incinerators cause pollution and actually undermine the need for conservation and waste reduction.

We need to move towards a ‘zero waste’ strategy: reducing the amount of waste produced, re-using, repairing and recycling materials, recovering usable materials, and composting organic matter. We would develop incentives for re-use schemes, and for businesses that repair, recycle and reduce packaging.

It is estimated that only around 50% of households take part in recycling at present, with about 35% of Cornwall‘s domestic refuse being recycled. So encouraging more people to recycle, even with the existing infrastructure, could have a huge role to play.

Even more potential exists in encouraging businesses to recycle – at the moment it is often inconvenient and expensive for business. The Council can help reduce business waste.

Of course, waste is also about litter, which is a particular problem near takeaway food outlets. We would like to see action to make these places responsible for the litter their customers create.

Our Vision for Waste

New resource-recovery parks – local facilities that collect, process and redistribute recyclable material, and where community-based initiatives can develop and prosper.

More recycling of kitchen and garden waste, through greater composting at home, as well as using technologies such as anaerobic digestion that have been shown to work well elsewhere.

Standardisation of the new Cornwall-wide recycling service, so that best practice by the old district councils is provided right across Cornwall.