To sort or not to sort

Readers may recall that last June I asked the Prime Minister about what he could do to improve the quality of recycled materials collected in the UK, specifically to deal with the issue of material of such a poor standard that it could only be exported to India or China. As I reported at the time, the PM answered a different question about recycling, not the one I had asked him.

So, when Mark Prisk, the Minister for Business & Enterprise came to Leeds a few weeks ago, I asked him the same question. Prisk also answered a different question and told me that he would be working with packaging manufacturers to improve the recyclability of materials not currently collected. All very worthy, but not what I wanted to know.

Rather than letting Mr Prisk off the hook, I wrote to him to explain in more detail. I pointed out the potential for job creation through improving the quality of recycled materials collected and I further pointed out that the recent Waste Review had make all the right noises about this issue but had failed to translate these into policies.

To his credit, Mr Prisk sent my correspondence to Lord Taylor of Holbeach who is the minister responsible for recycling.

Lord Taylor replied in October and a copy of his letter was forwarded to me. This stated that the Government believes that the choice of collection methods is up to individual local authorities and should reflect local circumstances, demographics and customer needs. He went on to explain that collection methods ranged from "fully source separated" to "fully co-mingled" and in the latter case the material would be "separated in a Materials Recycling Facility or MRF".

Whilst the Government has faith in these MRFs being able to provide material of a suitable quality for domestic and export markets he acknowledged improvements could be made. To this end, his department (Defra) would be working with the waste management industry to develop a "MRF code of practice" to promote quality. The code would be voluntary but possibly could be mandatory.

Now to go back to basics. If you collect recyclable materials and sort them at the kerbside you end up with well sorted, high value, high quality material. If you collect in the "co-mingled" method described by the minister, you then have a problem to solve. The MRF is one such solution to that problem.

A voluntary code of practice for MRFs is a bit like a voluntary Christmas dinner for turkeys. The bar will have to be set very low for many MRFs to sign up to it.

But here is where the fun starts. My friends at the Campaign for Real Recycling (CRR) reckon that Defra has incorrectly transposed the European Revised Waste Framework Directive into UK law and that commingling is contrary to the spirit of this legislation. The CRR has been granted a judicial review and Defra believes that it is going to lose this.

As such Defra has announced that it intends to change the wording of the legislation to ensure that "multi bin recycling systems are not imposed on residents", but ensuring quality is maintained. However, either the Directive requires separate collections or it does not and it is difficult to understand how Defra could change the law to make something that is illegal allowable.

So now, all of the vested interests are making a lot of noise. But at the end of the day, the Directive is what it is and poor quality is surely unacceptable. The materials industry is now coming together under the new Resources Association to stand up for quality. The battle lines are being drawn. Government is on the fence.

It will be fascinating to see how this plays out. Daily Mail readers should prepare for the frenzied headlines that will surely follow.