News

Government waste policy will increasingly look across products' complete life cycle, a top official in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said this week.

Neil Thornton, Defra's director of sustainable consumption, production and waste, told members of the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee that Defra was revising its overarching waste directive and would extend it by spring 2008 to include product consumption.

He also said the government would use landfill tax to fund environmental projects run by the Waste & Resources Action Programme and Envirowise, and to encourage manufacturers to produce less waste.

The committee, which is investigating options for waste reduction, also heard from Tony Pedrotti, director of sustainable development and regulation at the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR).

Pedrotti said manufacturers should be challenged not just to think of new products as the latest gadgets, but also to consider their disposal and reuse, and consumers could play their part.

Committee member Baroness Sharp of Guildford said: "Consumers are a very big lever here; they are extremely receptive to ideas, as was shown by their reaction to plastic bags in supermarkets."

David Evans, director for innovation in the Department for Innovation, Universities & Skills (DIUS), also gave evidence to the committee.

Its inquiry is focusing on the role of design and the use of different materials in the creation of waste; whether better-designed products would remove the 'built-in obsolescence' trend; and whether the current regulatory framework is an incentive to develop more sustainable products and processes.

Click here for more on the inquiry.