Biffa director, Peter Jones, told representatives from the food industry that the UK was some five to ten years behind other European countries in the management of waste and that it was only just beginning to introduce systems to segregate waste by type and use materials as new resources.

He put this down to the UK Government's slow response to the EU directives that were driving progress in other countries.

He told delegates at The Society of Food Hygiene Technology's briefing session that much of the process equipment and science of material management were already available, but that the generation of waste and the potential alternative end life uses, such as energy generation, composting, and recycling, still needed to be tackled. Currently the cost to handle one tonne of waste is £20-£30. The cost to process it through a sustainable process would be £50-£90.

He also covered the increased costs of handling products at end of life, a requirement of the Producer Responsibility Directives, which are to be fully implemented by 2005. "These are likely to be included in the selling price," said Jones, although some suppliers are looking at leasing products to customers to ensure continuity of control over the product at end of life.

Because of the cost implications, he said that the UK Government was currently providing local authorities with subsidies to invest in waste handling methods in a bid to divert organic material away from land- fill. However, there was still a need for UK wide waste management systems integrated with IT data collection systems, and unless the government develops a unified stance to integrated environment management, the UK would be left even further behind its European counterparts, he said.