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Archived press release

 


New Recycling Law could Save Council Tax Payers Millions. FOE launches Private Members Bill

17 September 1998

The Bill - which is being promoted by Labour MP David Chaytor, Friends of the Earth,Waste Watch and the Community Recycling Network - is expected to be adopted as a Private Members Bill this November. A similar Bill, introduced in March this year, and which ran out of Parliamentary time, was backed by 250 MPs, as well as numerous local authorities and recycling businesses.

Recycling newspapers and magazines not only reduces waste going to landfill sites but it also helps prevent wildlife rich forests in Scandinavia and Canada from being chopped down to provide the UK with “virgin paper”.

Mike Childs, Senior Waste Campaigner at Friends of the Earth said:
“We very much hope that the Government will give its backing to this very important Bill. This new law would be bring enormous benefits for both the environment and the ecomomy. It will reduce waste and protect forests, as well as creating thousands of new jobs and saving the UK millions of pounds through the reduction in imports. Local authorities will also make huge financial savings enabling them to spend more on cash strapped services such as education.

The Bill will also mandate newspaper publishers to tell people how much recycled fibre individual titles contain (averaged over 6 months). For the first time this will enable people to guage which publications are the greenest.

ENDS
[1] At the moment council tax-payers pay around £156m million for the recycling or disposal of newspapers and magazines. Ensuring that publishers fund the recycling of half of what they produce, local authorities can potentially save £78 million every year.

[2] Ensuring that newspapers have to contain 80 per cent recycled newsprint by 2010 will also create

a market for the recycled material.


For further information please contact the Friends of the Earth media team on 020 7566 1649.

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