Environment Magazine

WRAP, the industry sponsored association, that helps business reduce waste has announced its members' targets for waste reduction under an new agreement referrred to as the Courtauld Commitment 2.  The new targets are a 10% reduction in carbon impact of grocery waste by 2013, a reduction in household waste of 4% by 2013 and a reduction in supply chain product and packaging waste of 5% by 2013.  The new commitment was signed by 29 of the UK's largest retailers and suppliers.  Others are expected to follow.

While any target is progress, but given the amount of waste that the food and grocery sector generates, are these targets enough? 

Copenhagen was a disappointment but to those that have taken a practical view of climate change and climate politics it came as no surprise.  In the hands of the UN, climate change politics has always been about aid, not climate.  National positions have always been taken and targets set against the demands for compensation or if you like aid.  The assumptions that put Kyoto in place, no longer apply, simply because the world has changed since Kyoto.  The population and immigration have increased, pollution has increased and the balance of power has moved away from the developed world.  The real threat to the environment is in the developing world, not the developed world because it is there that there is the pressure of populltion, corruption (yes a big intangible contributor) and lack of  measurement and infrastruture to commit to clean energy projects.  As the climate knows no boundaries, so any international agreement should show no lnational boundaries and this idea that one nation has a right to pollute and the other a greater right to pollute because of its past is a nonsense.