AQW 9722/17-22

Mr John Blair
Alliance Party
South Antrim

Tabled Date: 04/11/2020
Answered On Date: 04/12/2020
Priority Written: No

Question:
To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs what steps he is taking to prevent the use of (i) incineration; and (ii) landfill for unsold clothing suitable for reusing or recycling.

Answer:

I am committed to working towards reducing the volume of textiles and clothing sent to landfill and incineration and officials from my Department are working on a number of initiatives in this area. The waste hierarchy, in accordance with Article 4 of the Waste Framework Directive, prioritises waste prevention, reuse, and recycling ahead of landfill and incineration and legislation is in place to support this.

In addition to this, the transposition of the new Circular Economy Package, which was agreed by the AERA committee on 19 November 2020 will add further requirements to ensure that waste which has been separately collected for preparing for reuse or recycling is not incinerated, except where incineration delivers the best environmental outcome. It will also require that steps be taken to ensure the amount of municipal waste landfilled is reduced to 10% or less by 2035, providing added impetus to make sure as many resources as possible are being moved further up the waste hierarchy.

Officials from my Department have been involved with the development of a textile-focussed UK-wide initiative. The Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) Textiles 2030 campaign, which my officials have been involved in developing, will deliver a UK national roadmap, convening the fashion and textiles sector around priority actions and targets with circularity at the core. The initiative will seek to reduce consumption and environmental impact of textiles, as well as stimulating circularity in the sector. The 2030 ambition of the project is to ensure all products are designed with circularity in mind, more circular raw material is in new products than linear raw material and more products are sold for re-use in the UK than new.

More locally, I have recently approved funding for the delivery of a targeted behaviour change campaign designed to reduce waste from textiles and to help normalise purchasing, re-use and re-purposing behaviours with regard to textiles. Officials are currently engaging with Keep Northern Ireland Beautiful (KNIB) who will deliver the campaign, which is expected launch in early 2021.

Funding has also been approved to assist the launch of the Northern Ireland Resource Network (NIRN) which provides support to organisations, social enterprises and charities working within the reuse and repair sector in Northern Ireland. This network will raise awareness of reuse and repair within Northern Ireland, it will help people to better understand the ways resources can be reused or repaired and it will highlight the importance of diverting resources, including textiles, away from waste management processes.