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Refuse Collection

Excellent. Perhaps I had better get on to the key points that I intend to make. I shall pass over most of the statistics that I had planned to give—many are in the report anyway—except to reiterate that Britain's recycling rates are relatively poor compared with those of many other European Union states. In particular, we have historically sent much more waste to landfill. I believe that everybody in this country is trying to achieve a large culture shift and a huge change in how each of us behaves, which is very difficult. The report exclusively concentrates on refuse collection by local authorities. Most of that is domestic waste. Although local authorities can charge for and take away commercial waste, most commercial waste is not collected by them, and we note that. Important though domestic waste is, it is still a relatively small proportion of the waste that is produced; indeed, it is only a tenth of it. That is not a reason for us not be serious about it, but we need to keep it in perspective.