§ Mr. Peter AinsworthTo ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs when she will publish quality standards for the composting of household waste. [51415]
§ Margaret Beckett[holding answer 19 April 2002]: There is currently a fully developed industry standard, produced by the Composting Association (CA), that is available to compost producers. The high quality of this standard is more likely to be met by source-separated organic waste (commercial or household), rather than by mixed household waste.
The Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) are working with the CA and the British Standards Institute (BSI) to convert the existing industry standard into the fast track version (Publicly Available Specification) of a full national British Standard. They anticipate this will be available in the Autumn of this year. The CA, WRAP and BSI are considering options regarding certification schemes that could be linked with the PAS to encourage users of compost to demand a product that meets this standard; 603W this in turn will encourage producers to make the investment necessary to achieve the standard in their production process.