EU Order Spells Door-to-door Recycling for Uk

Britain was yesterday given a five-year EU deadline to embrace German-style rubbish recycling and told it must recycle up to 30% more waste every year.

The mandatory "step change in recycling culture" was approved by the European parliament and is likely to force No 10 to institute doorstep collections of discarded packaging waste for every household.

The government estimates a £400m bill for the necessary infrastructure to comply with the changes, which must be implemented by 2008.

The recycling and waste recovery targets are legally binding and part of an existing EU packaging waste directive which the EU assembly has voted to strengthen.

Critics point to the government's spectacular past failure to cope with similar EU legislation on recycling fridges and old cars and argue that yesterday's vote could lead to yet more mountains of waste.

Although the details of yesterday's vote still need to be finalised, few changes are envisaged and Britain has signalled its willingness to accept the 2008 deadline.

The changes are far-reaching.

MEPs voted to increase the minimum mandatory recycling target from between 25% and 45% (depending on the material) to between 55% and 80%

Officials said 60% of all glass and paper packaging waste will have to be recycled in future as well as 50% of all metal waste and 22.5% of all plastic waste.

David Bowe, a Labour MEP specialising in environmental affairs, said the 2008 deadline was "practical and feasible" but would require a lot of work.

"There is no way we can meet these targets without having doorstep collections for every household in the country, if not for every local authority," he told the Guardian.

"This is going to be the big cultural change. We will have to be more frugal with our resources in future and households will probably be required to separate out plastic bottles, tins and newspapers. We are talking about millions of tonnes of rubbish here."

The hope was, he added, that companies (who will be required to cover the costs of recycling) will stop producing excessive packaging material altogether.

The UK's recycling performance is mixed - a long way behind Scandinavia, Germany and the Netherlands but well ahead of environmental pariahs such as Ireland, Greece and Portugal.

According to the latest European commission figures (which date from 1999) the UK recycles about 35% of all its packaging waste every year compared to the EU average of about 50%.

Britain is put to shame, however, by Germany which recycles about 80% of all its waste and Sweden and Austria which recycle some 65% of their rubbish, respectively.

EU officials say that most of Britain's recycled material is taken from businesses but argue that in future domestic waste recycling will have to be dramatically stepped up if the EU targets are to be met.

Margot Wallstrom, the EU environment commissioner, hailed yesterday's vote, saying that the upwards "revision more than doubles the minimum recycling targets".

Chris Davies, a Liberal Democrat MEP, said that the UK needed the EU to keep pushing it on environmental matters. He said: "It's forcing us to be more ambitious and demanding.

"Once again we see that the EU is the driving force behind most of Britain's environmental legislation."