Waste not want not - States Assembly

Building regulations
6.26 One of the reasons that people give for
not recycling is the lack of room in their homes
to store separated material. 86 In future such
storage space should be an integral part of the
design of living space in new developments.
Existing building regulations and planning
guidance do not cover designing in space for
the storage of items (such as recyclates) either
inside or outside the home.
Recommendation 6:
ODPM should revise the building regulations
to require, where there are new housing
developments with more than 50 houses,
that space is allocated within the
development for easily accessible recycling
facilities. Similar requirements should be
taken forward in Housing Corporation
standards for new social housing schemes
and NHBC standards for new private housing
developments.
6.28 Although some progress has been made,
performance across departments against targets
set by Green Ministers 88 remains patchy. For
example, there has been wide variation in the
performance of departments against the key
target to recover 25% of total office waste from
recycling or composting in 2000/1, rising to
70% by 2003/4. While a few departments have
been exceeding their recycling targets, others
are recycling less than 25%. 89 Pilot
arrangements for departments to procure
recycled goods, initially paper, were announced
in Waste Strategy 2000 but to date have not
been successfully taken up. Targets proposed by
SPG, in partnership with WRAP, address some
areas of government procurement of particular
environmental concern where there is scope for
improvement. These are set out in Box 21.
Option (d): green
procurement targets for the
public sector
6.27 The Government can play a significant
role in boosting markets for recycled materials
by increasing targets for green procurement. A
high-level inter-departmental Sustainable
Procurement Group (SPG) 87 has been set up by
DEFRA to raise awareness of the importance of
green procurement across government.
86
MORI research report for SU and ENCAMS study op. cit
WASTE NOT, WANT NOT
87
SPG is feeding into the new Framework for Sustainable Development on the Government Estate to be published in Spring 2003 (see
http://www.sustainable-development.gov.uk). This new Framework supersedes the Greening Government initiative and will
incorporate new targets
88
Green Ministers are tasked with considering the impact of government policies on sustainable development and championing
sustainable development in their own departments. For details of published targets see the Greening Government Third Annual Report
(2001) at http://www.sustainable-development.gov.uk
89
Data from the Greening Government Third Annual Report (2001) e.g. the Home Office recycled 21% of its waste in 2000/01; the ONS
22%; and DfEE 25%. A number of departments did not submit data, in part because some may not have had adequate data
collection systems in place at the time
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