More from Less

• Philosophy

• How the Material Resources Strategy was developed?
  
      - Workshop Index
        - MRS Documents
  

• Background and context

• Overview of the problem

• Visions and aims

• Increasing resource efficiency and reducing wastage

• Maximising reuse, recycling and composting

• Dealing with unavoidable waste

• Meeting the need for minerals

• Need for new infrastructure and sites

• Moving forward

• Glossary

• FAQ

• Contacts / Get Involved

• Links

More from Less sets out the philosophy and aspirations for a different approach in managing material resources over the period to 2020.

Traditionally, the focus of community debate around materials use has been about meeting the demand for ‘new’ minerals and meeting the need for waste management, particularly with respect to household rubbish. But concerns have been expressed for some time both globally and locally about the sustainability of an approach focused almost solely on digging minerals and dealing with ‘end of pipe’ waste management problems.

Rather than just ensuring that the need for minerals and waste management is met, we need to focus on the broader issue of the good management of material resources. This was the motivation for interested local organisations and individuals to come together to work out how these wider, more difficult issues can be tackled and what can be done locally to achieve a better outcome. The process involved a wide range of community and industry representatives working together with Portsmouth and Southampton City Councils, Hampshire County Council and Project Integra, the Hampshire municipal waste partnership.

A community owned vision is set out that will require substantial changes in the next 15 years to address the subject in an integrated and holistic way. It is deemed vital to adopt solutions that are affordable to both the private and public sectors and are efficient in delivering wider benefits that help the environment and create better communities.

More from Less seeks to answer four key questions:

What can be done locally to enable society to change practices and behaviour to reduce the consumption of materials?

How much scope is there to reuse and recycle more materials and feed them back economically into the production system?

How can we best recover value from, and deal effectively with, materials that cannot be practically reused or recycled?

How can the need for new materials be best met?

It will not be quick or easy to deliver the answers to these questions. Success depends on how quickly the matching of new legislation, environmental taxes and behaviour change can be delivered. Crucially, we will need to provide for new and different resource management facilities, as well as satisfying the on-going need for conventional mineral sites and waste management facilities.

The Role of More from Less

More from Less is intended as an over-arching philosophy to act as the primary reference point to guide and integrate work in three key areas:

Producing a joint statutory Minerals and Waste Development Framework (MWDF), setting out policies for how the need for minerals sites and resource and waste management facilities should be met

Development of plans for managing municipal waste under the collective Hampshire councils’ partnership Project Integra (PI)

Implementation of societal change initiatives and demonstration projects via the Natural Resources Initiative (NRI), in conjunction with other elements of resource use such as energy, water, biomass etc.

More information on each of these areas is given in the Moving Forward section. Traditionally they have been progressed independently. More from Less provides the context to ensure that the various elements contribute to a common goal, furthering the aims set out in this document, subject to ensuring compliance with statutory guidance and procedures.

To further help implementation via wider understanding and support for the vision amongst decision-makers, the principles also need to be reflected in other policy documents such as community strategies and local development frameworks (the replacement for local plans).

To underline the community links, it is proposed to invite the Local Strategic Partnerships throughout Hampshire to endorse More from Less in addition to their respective community strategies.

This document has been written in semi-formal terms with the aim of clearly setting out the arguments. Although it is available to all, it is specifically aimed at key decision makers like Local Strategic Partnerships and consultee organisations.

More from Less is not a statutory policy document in planning and municipal waste management terms; it is intended that the outcomes will feed into the relevant statutory policy documents as outlined in the Moving Forward section.

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