Waste not want not - States Assembly

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the costs of waste management and disposal
should be fully internalised in the costs of all
goods and services; and
the waste management options that secure
the greatest environmental benefit should be
pursued, provided they are soundly based in
cost-benefit terms.
from waste by recycling it, composting or
recovering energy (i.e. through incineration)
and, finally, the option at the bottom of
the hierarchy is to dispose of waste e.g.
through landfill.
Figure 6: the waste hierarchy 63
The achievement of these
goals should be guided by
sound principles
5.5 If these goals are to be achieved they will
need to draw on a set of guiding principles. The
three important ones for waste are:
Reduce
Re-use
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using the waste hierarchy as a guide to
environmental benefits and applying the
BPEO to make decisions;
setting out a clear framework of roles and
responsibilities; and
Recover
Disposal
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keeping options open.
Using the waste hierarchy and
the BPEO to achieve higher
rates of waste reduction, reuse
and recycling
5.6 The waste hierarchy is a useful framework
that has become a cornerstone of sustainable
waste management, setting out the order in
which options for waste management should be
considered based on environmental impact.
Following the hierarchy (see Figure 6) the best
option for the environment is to generate less
waste. The second best option is to re-use
products and materials, thirdly to recover value
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As set out in the EC Waste Framework Directive
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See for example, consultation responses to A Way With Waste op. cit
5.7 The merits or otherwise of the waste
hierarchy have been widely debated. The main
criticisms are that:
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it is too simplistic a tool to use; 64 and
it does not explicitly incorporate a costbenefit
dimension for reaching judgements
about the preferred point within the
hierarchy.
5.8 To answer the first of these, more
sophisticated variants of the hierarchy, (as
shown for example in Figure 7) have been
developed which set out the range of waste
management options more comprehensively.
MOVING FORWARDS TO A NEW STRATEGY
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