Dragon Interview with Cllr Neil Dallen: Our Waste Process Is Not Sustainable, Investment Needed

Published on: 9 Sep, 2021
Updated on: 12 Sep, 2021

Cllr Neil Dallen, chair of the Surrey Environment Partnership.

By Hugh Coakley

What does happen to our waste our recycling once it is collected by the council? Does some of it end up dumped in a third-world country?

Surrey Environment Partnership (SEP) has reported on the subject and the Partnership chair, Cllr Neil Dallen (Res Assoc, Town Ward , Epsom & Ewell Borough Council), confirmed that the current system of incinerating waste without greenhouse gas extraction was unsustainable and investment was needed.

He said: “It is difficult but we have to put money into it if we are going to incinerate and capture the CO2. The investment should come from the manufacturers that provide the waste that can’t be recycled. And from the taxpayer.”

In a frank interview, Cllr Dallen said the messages to people on residential waste was “confusing”, with the recycling business often changing its requirements.

He said he was putting “a lot of faith into the government’s strategy” on waste. This was to include requiring packaging producers to pay the full cost of dealing with their waste, more consistent household recycling, and a Deposit Return Scheme. He said it could change the way waste was handled in the country.

Despite Surrey having the third-best recycling rate in England amongst the two-tiered authorities and matching the best countries in the world (according to Wikipedia), Cllr Dallen also said he didn’t know what happened to the seven per cent of waste listed as recycled in the SEP report but noted as going to “unknown destinations”.

He said he was sure that “people were talking to the companies like Suez and Biffa” to stop this happening. “The ideal response is to have companies doing the recycling in the UK and that will take time”.

You can see the full interview here…