Doing well, but ‘more effort needed’

18 October 2006

Things are improving, but more still needs to be done to increase recycling rates, tackle congestion and increase flood protection, according to the annual State of the nation report.
The document, released this week by the Institution of Civil Engineers, points to progress on road safety, with the UK well on target to achieve a 33% reduction in deaths and serious injuries between a 1994 to 1998 baseline period and 2010.
Progress on recycling and reuse of materials from waste in the UK is ‘steady’, and in the three years to March 2006, improved flood protection had been provided to more than 100,000 properties, exceeding the Government’s target by 28,000.
However, while works in the highway are responsible for 10% of the nation’s congestion and traffic accidents account for a further 25%, almost two-thirds of congestion results from the volume of traffic, which causes bunching, slowing and stop-start driving. In order to tackle this, the report calls on the Government to ‘take a lead’ on road-user pricing by making people understand the problems by ‘paying at the point of use’. The report states recycling is at a steady rate, but to reduce landfill, a major change in awareness about what can – and should – happen to waste when it leaves homes and workplaces needs to take place.
To meet European Union Landfill Directive targets the majority of materials that have traditionally gone to landfill need to enter a cycle of reuse. But the report estimates that, to meet those targets, the UK will need 1,700 new facilities of a range of sizes to be operating by 2012, at a cost of some £10bn.
According to the report some 600,000 homes remain at ‘serious risk’ of flooding, with 4.5M people, 2.3M homes and 1.7M hectares of land at a lesser risk from flooding. Studies by the Environment Agency report 5% of the country’s 30,000km of flood defences are also in poor condition.

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Doing well, but ‘more effort needed’

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