Lords seek end to “throwaway mentality”

I am not sure when the trend towards throw away consumer products began. I am not sure anybody knows; I think it possibly just crept up on us slowly but surely one product at a time.

It possibly started with cheaper electronics and slowly progressed to other more expensive items.

What I mean is, how long is it since anyone took an old toaster to be repaired?

Well many of the people sitting in the House of Lords are possibly old enough to remember when an electric kettle was worth repairing, and now they are saying that we should return to a repair rather than throw away mentality for the sake of the environment.

They say that one way to achieve this would be to remove the VAT from many repairs to encourage repairing rather than dumping.

They say that in this way consumer goods would become more financially viable as repairable items.

As things stand at the moment, so many items are not financially viable from a repair point of view it’s cheaper to buy a new one than pay someone to repair the old one.

The Science Committee of the Lords wants to see flexible rates of VAT on repairs to make getting things fixed a more attractive proposition.

It would still be arguable how many items would become viable repairs without VAT, because of course there are still labour, call out and parts to be paid for.

They also say that too much government emphasis is being placed on household waste and there should be a shift in attention towards the business sector and its waste management.

The Lords say that household waste has been very successfully controlled with a vast increase in recycling, but that waste is only a very small part of the rubbish mountain the UK creates each year.

They want the government to now place much greater emphasis on working with industry to stem the tide of commercial rubbish.

The big push to get the public behind recycling has meant that business waste has been sidelined; they believe this is important as public dustbins only account for less than 10% of the county’s rubbish.

Of the other 90+%, over 10% is commercial waste, around 13% comes from industry, over 30% is construction waste, another 30% surprisingly comes from mining related activities.

The Lords also want a new system of eco-labels on consumable goods so the public can evaluate the environmental impact of a whole range of goods.