We are now only a few days away from Christmas, and I for one am looking forward to a nice break, after what has been another very busy year in the world of waste!
LARAC held our three regular conferences in Scotland, Wales and England – attracting more attendees than previous years – and for the first time we also ventured over to Northern Ireland to join up with the CIWM event.
We also worked hard on your behalf producing policy briefings, consultation responses and webinars, all with the help of the two new members of LARAC staff we welcomed this year – Toni McNamara and Lucy Bennett. Along with Carole Taylor and Mariana McManus, they all work tirelessly behind the scenes on behalf of members to keep the LARAC machine running smoothly. A big thank you to all of them.
And of course in October we finally received the long awaited response on Simpler Recycling, which outlined how local authorities will be expected to deliver their household and commercial waste services over the next few years. There were some welcome outcomes and some that were not so welcome, and LARAC will continue to lobby government over these issues to ensure the best outcomes for our members.
We are also working on the EPR agenda. DEFRA have put forward the suggestion of the development of three groups to support the Scheme Administrator steering group, one of which will be an LA Consortium. The remit of the group is still in discussion, but a couple of areas that this group hopes to address are efficient and effective services and support for Local Authorities who are required to develop Improvement Plans. We will continue to provide more information on this as the group develops.
So that brings us right up to date with Christmas around the corner. This is of course an incredibly busy period for the waste industry, with additional collections and often poor weather to contend with, and its very humbling to see how hard everyone works to keep services running over the festive season and beyond, so a big thank you everyone.
We also need to continue with our communications to promote waste minimisation over the festive period, which is always a hard message to convey. Lets hope people are slowly starting to consider more what they buy and how they dispose of it.
So let's see what 2024 brings. There will be lots to keep us all busy, but in the meantime, I hope you will all be able to relax over Christmas whatever your plans are and have a wonderful break. See you all in the new year!
