Climate Change Bill [HL]

Part of the debate – in the House of Lords at 6:30 pm on 18 March 2008.

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Photo of Baroness Carnegy of Lour Baroness Carnegy of Lour Conservative 6:30, 18 March 2008

My Lords, your Lordships certainly are very good when it comes to rubbish. It is a great subject for us all and we seem to be very interested in discussing it. It is most important. Looking at the average supermarket trolley—this week I had a good look at my own and at some others—one sees that it contains far more rubbish in plastic and paper wrapping than the plastic bags into which that is put as one goes away. A very good move would be to look carefully at packaging and see whether something can be done, perhaps through the standards authority, to reduce it. I am not sure whether this was said in Committee, but it would be far more useful than limiting plastic bags—although plastic bags are a very good advertisement for the cause and I entirely support it. The packaging in a full supermarket trolley is enormous. The rubbish that one puts into the plastic bag, after one has used the things one has bought—the plastic bag that it originally came in—is far more than the plastic bag itself. I think there are not many people who operate their kitchen who would disagree with that.

The other point—I am not sure whether it has been made—is the increase in fly-tipping which is going to happen as a result of this. In Germany, they have been very disciplined about the whole subject for many years. They are used to it. I do not think there is a lot of fly-tipping—I may be wrong. My impression is that the system works rather well. In this country, people in cities close to the countryside or to a park are going to resent having to pay enormous amounts, so they are going to just put their rubbish into the back of a car and dump it somewhere. As someone who lives not terribly far from the city—where people are already not very tidy about what they do with their old beds, prams and so on—and on a farm where one is constantly having to remove rubbish, I fear that fly-tipping will become very much worse. I wonder whether the Government have considered strengthening the legislation about that alongside the legislation about charging for rubbish, because I think it would be very helpful. Incidentally, it is not only city people who fly-tip. Fly-tipping happens from villages and small towns, too, but particularly from the edges of cities, where the countryside is not too far away.