What a waste

DEFRA are reluctant to define what counts as waste, in a recent set of regulations for the agricultural industry.  The principle that what is waste for one person is useful material for another applies even to manure.  The key is manure management. Manure is waste 'if it pollutes a river course but it is liquid god if it enourages beneficiall plant growth'. I've even been on a farm where human waste usually carefully hidden from the squeamish was being utilised effectively for agricultural purposes.  If a farmer wants to get rid of waste products from his farming enterprise he must now be licensed, even if the waste products is something a householder has immorally dumped on his land.  This enables the powers that be to monitor what is wasted and where it is going.

Householders would probably baulk at such regulations; the suggestion that we might link the community charge with the amount of waste we produce has been criticised. Is it right to limit freedom for the sake of others, of the future of the world?  It's an ethical, philosophical and theological question. The more our waste has been recycledand reused - what in agricultural terms would be the liquid gold application process - the better.

Increasingly, recycling and waste management will become a Christian ethical imperative, for God's sake.

The Revd Canon Glyn Evans is Diocesan Rural Officer