Northern Irland -- Environment Minister Alex Attwood has announced a consultation on a bold new plan for keeping Northern Ireland's waste out of landfill. Among the targets he is proposing for 2020 are increasing recycling and re-use of household, construction and industrial waste to 60 percent and upwards, and delivery of the major waste infrastructure programme which will divert over 1.5 million tonnes of residual waste from landfill.

The Minister is proposing that future delivery of the waste strategy should focus solely on areas where most impact can be achieved, using a series of planned interventions to reach specific targets.

Outlining his plan, the Minister said: “These are very ambitious targets that I am setting. It is right to do so, given the benefits to the environment, the valuable resources locked in waste and the jobs that could be produced. We need to be imaginative and push ourselves to achieve them; certainly as Environment Minister I will be pushing myself to the limit.

Referring to the revised European Waste Framework Directive, which came into force on 12 December he said: “I am determined that we exploit the opportunity presented by the revised Waste Framework Directive to place ourselves at the heart of a sustainable global economy. To do that we need to work with our closest neighbours to develop new, imaginative and cost-effective ways of managing and maximizing the increasingly scarce and finite resources that we are still sending to landfill.

The consultation on the Addendum to the Waste Management Strategy will remain open until 20th October 2011 and can be accessed on the Department’s website at doeni.gov.uk.

Quelle: Rethink Waste NI

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