Waste not . .
Anthony Hopkinson
The Government is leading a national drive to save and recycle more waste'. That's
what it says in a pamphlet published last year and issued by the National Anti-Waste Programme as a guide to voluntary collections of waste paper and other materials .for recycling. 85 per cent of the raw material for the paper we use comes from abroad; but only 28 per cent of the waste paper available for collection is recovered. Any increase in the collection and recycling of waste paper will directly reduce our dependence on imported pulp and finished paper.
• So what form does the Government's leadership take? It has put up £23 million to help the paper industry introduce more processing equipment, but what example does it show the rest of us? I rang the House of Commons first to see what was happening there. Yes, they said, a question had been asked: some members wanted recycled paper ,used for House of Commons stationery. The idea was under consideration. Next I tried the Department of Industry and the Department of the Environment: these two co-sponsor the National Anti-Waste Programme. They used envelopes twice over, it seemed, but they did not use recycled paper for other stationery. One civil servant explained that they could not use recycled paper because they had to guarantee the permanence of government documents. I wondered just how necessary it was to preserve interdepartmental memos for posterity but in any case there's no reason to suppose that files of correspondence will fall to bits unless the finest quality paper is used. Books and magazines printed on low grade paper a century ago are still readable.
The Stationery Office, when it invites tenders for printing, says that consideration will be given to the content of recycled waste in the paper to be used. I fear this is largely an empty gesture; I could kind no public bodies except LAMSAC (Local Authority Management Services and Computer Committee), and of course the National Anti-Waste Programme itself, using recycled paper for their publications and stationery. And the National Anti Waste Programme could mention no business or organisations outside the public sector using recycled paper except Oxfam and the Friends of the Earth.
A good deal more could be done by the Government to set an example. HMSO should not just give consideration to the content of waste paper in its work; it should insist that nothing but recycled paper be used except where it it quite unsuitable. It should encourage those who design government publications to create layouts suit
able for recycled paper. At present many government publications show a lavish use of white space round small islands of print. A Department of Industry pamphlet called Incentives for Industry had margins taking up a third of the width of the pages and headings using a quarter of each page. The two addresses of the Department's Welsh office had a whole page to themselves. The pamphlet could have been printed on 23 per cent less paper if it had been laid out like an ordinary book or magazine. Such lavish use of space not only wastes paper: it also requires a very high quality and so inhibits the use of recycled paper. HMSO should set the lowest acceptable specification and restrain the artistic impulses of its designers.
The Government has adopted the slogan 'Save and recycle' with a symbol composed of three bent arrows in a circle; but HMSO could not tell me of any recycled paper now in use which bore this symbol. It would also be a great help if local authorities were to step up their waste collections: they now bring in a third less waste paper than they did in 1973. Labour difficulties and the uncertainties of the waste paper market have led to this decline; the situation is now so serious that there may not be enough being collected when the demand increases. In the short term, financial assistance,may be needed to persuade local authorities to resume collections.
Since we only recover 28 per cent of the paper we use, there is plenty more avail able. The Friends of the Earth, in a report to the National Economic Development Council, have recommended a study of the possibility of smaller-scale manufacture of both traditional and new products from waste paper. The report suggests using waste paper for domestic insulation, as has been done in the United States for many years; the thermal efficiency is greater than that of many materials now used.
In other countries at various times original and unusual applications for waste paper have been tried: a church built of papier-mache stood for twenty-five years in Bergen in Norway. In Russia, more recently, high-quality roofing shingles have been made from waste paper while the Australians are feeding it to cattle. They have found government publications particularly suitable for this purpose.
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