07.09.11
UK must invest £8bn in waste infrastructure
A parliamentary report has been launched by the Associate Parliamentary Sustainable Resource Group to explain how and why the UK must invest £8bn in waste infrastructure by 2020.
Jamie Reed MP, Shadow Minister for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said in a speech yesterday that the report should be read by both local industries and government at a national level.
He said: “Its findings need to be acknowledged and actions should surely follow as a result, as despite the widespread disappointment with the waste review, the issues surrounding resources sustainability are surely above party politics.
“The issues at hand, whether with regard to the investment needed to develop adequate waste management infrastructure, the environmental imperative of reducing and re-using our resources in a more sustainable way or the immense economic opportunities that doing this will provide are issues of inter-generational equity, fundamentally issues of profound national interest.”
Reed highlighted the need for further infrastructure to deal with our waste, and avoid paying high landfill tax to the EU.
“Resource management is one of the single most important areas where ferocious innovation is needed, so this will require politicians, innovators and businesses to think and act together in new and different ways” he said.
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