Campaigning for the countryside in Lancashire, Greater Manchester and Merseyside.
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The Lancashire Branch of the Campaign to Protect Rural
England
Hazelwell House,
Station Road,
Bamber Bridge,
Preston,
Lancashire,
PR5 6TT
Tel: 01772 627510
Email: ruralengland@btconnect.com
Registered Charity Numbers : 221244 and 1107376
The Lancashire Branch of CPRE is a Company Limited By Guarantee registered in England, no. 5291461
Lancashire CPRE is a charity and provides all the content of these pages free of charge to the general public.
If you use the resources provided please consider joining us or making a donation to help us carry out our activities.
What are the issues for the countryside?
Households in England and Wales produce 26 million tonnes of waste each year, of which nearly 90% currently goes to landfill sites. The amount of land affected by land filling waste is set to increase. It is already difficult to get more than 10 miles from a landfill site in central and southern England and the cumulative impacts of landfill and changes to the local landscape are damaging communities and the distinctiveness and sense of place in rural areas.
The impacts of landfill sites include contamination of land and groundwater and increased traffic, litter, noise, odours and dust. Visually, landfill can permanently alter landscapes, since even the best restoration techniques can rarely return sites to their former appearance, and land raising can introduce alien land forms into the countryside.
Other methods of waste disposal, such as waste incineration, also have impacts on the countryside, by generating traffic and requiring new development. That is why CPRE is calling for alternative, more environmentally sensitive techniques of waste disposal and a stronger effort to reduce the amount of waste which we produce.
CPRE priorities
CPRE believes that waste minimisation should be the main priority for waste policy in order to save resources and to reduce the impact that waste disposal has on the countryside. This can only be achieved through a reduction in packaging, reuse of products, and far greater use of more sustainable techniques such as recycling and composting. CPRE endorses the waste hierarchy as set out in the Government's paper, A Way with Waste (1990), and recognises its important role as a framework which should influence the preparation of Waste Local Plans by local authorities.
The waste hierarchy:
Waste incineration and landfill are the two most controversial options for disposing of waste. CPRE believes that the future of provision of landfill sites should be strictly limited and that it should no longer be the cheapest and easiest way of getting rid of waste. This has partly been tackled by the introduction of the landfill tax, but further guidance needs to be given to local authorities to enable them to reduce the amount of waste that is produced and deal with waste in a more sustainable manner. This will require planning targets to reduce landfill and protect the countryside from new sites.
CPRE recognises that incineration will have a role to play in future waste management but it should be limited. Incineration should only be considered after all other waste disposal options further up the hierarchy have been fully tested. Any new developments should meet the highest technological specifications and include energy recovery combined heat and power (CHP) schemes wherever possible. Landscape and siting of plant should also be given careful consideration.
Campaign opportunities
The key campaign opportunities to influence how and where waste disposal takes place lie in influencing waste plans and strategies at a regional and county level. In particular, Waste Local Plans, and commenting on planning applications for waste facilities and for new development proposals is very important. You can:
- scrutinise your Waste Local Plan to check that policies are in line with Government policy on sustainable waste management and environmental protection set out in PPG10 and the National Waste Strategy;
- comment to the local authority on the environmental impacts which the policies might have (e.g. on the landscape, potential pollution risks, traffic generation);
- check that there are policies which aim to reduce the amount of waste going to landfill;
- check that challenging targets have been set to increase the amount of waste that is to be recycled and composted and that there are policies in place to ensure that these targets are met;
- challenge the requirements for further landfill sites, especially where vulnerable sites are indicated;
- encourage your local authority to ensure that policies are included in the Local Plan which require significant new housing, commercial and other developments to have conditions placed on them to include recycling facilities;
- consider the need for any proposed waste incineration facilities and the impact that they will have, and ensure that any proposals for incinerators are of the highest technological standards and comply with the EU Directives 89/369/EEC and 89/429/EEC on air pollution from municipal waste incinerators.