This means that in the U.K, all households and businesses are required to take appropriate measures to:
1. Encourage the prevention or reduction of waste production and its harmfulness
2. Promote the recovery of waste by means of recycling, re-use or reclamation
The directive’s requirements are supplemented by other directives for specific waste streams.
This is known as the Waste Hierarchy, and the everybody in the U.K is encouraged to enforce it at their homes and places of work:
The Waste Hierarchy
This means that:
- Household waste recycling rate reached 43.2% in England in 2012/13 *
- Household waste overall has fallen 12% since 2006/07, down to 22.6 million tonnes
- That’s 423kg of waste per person in 2012/13!*
- Local Authority managed waste going for incineration with energy recovery rose 13% to 5.5 million tonnes in 2012/13 and has more than doubled in the last ten years*
* https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/255610/Statistics_Notice1.pdf
