Minister urges end of leftovers and packaging in landfill tips

Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman said she wanted to go "further and faster" on tackling waste so rubbish is no longer dumped in landfill sites.

She also signalled a big push for anaerobic digestion – where food waste is turned into energy – as she accused Labour of being too slow to act.

But the Government refused to say whether Ministers would back former Environment Secretary Hilary Benn's plans to ban some recyclable or reusable items from being sent to landfill altogether.

Announcing a "no-holds barred" review of how England deals with waste, Mrs Spelman said: "We need a new approach to waste – one which works for the new economy.

"We cannot keep putting recyclable and biodegradable material into landfill. It threatens the environment and wastes what are incredibly valuable natural resources."

Having already ditched Labour's "bin taxes" in favour of offering householders incentives to recycle instead, Mrs Spelman said too little focus had been paid to waste created by business in recent years.

Officials have for some time been encouraging manufacturers to cut down on the amount of packaging used to protect goods because most of it is immediately thrown into the rubbish bin and ends up in landfill, for which councils are facing ever-larger bills.

Easter eggs are among the items which have raised particular concern, with little apparent relation to the huge boxes they are sold in and the amount of packaging needed to protect them. Speaking at the Futuresource conference in London, Mrs Spelman called for businesses to make a more concerted effort to reduce their contribution to levels of waste, pointing out it would also allow them to cut their own costs.

Schools, hospitals and homes will also be encouraged to save more of their food waste so it can be turned into heat and power. Mrs Spelman said she wanted "a much greater volume" of biodegradable waste going to anaerobic digestion.

But she said the Government was convinced offering incentives was the best way to achieve results rather than "threatening people with penalties and fines".

Mrs Spelman said that driving forward a "zero-waste society" would save money and create green jobs and industry, with the review looking at providing more facilities for processing recyclable rubbish in Britain rather than sending it abroad, and providing clearer labelling of what can be recycled.

Reducing landfill, which is taxed at a rate set to hit 72 a tonne by 2013, would, she argued, deliver financial savings and allow money to be made out of the resources that would otherwise end up in the ground.

Used aluminium cans currently fetch more than 800 a tonne. It takes 20 times more energy to manufacture new cans from raw materials than use recycled materials. Wasting resources that could be reused and having to pay landfill tax on them meant "we are paying twice when we bury resources like aluminium in landfill".

And while Mrs Spelman acknowledged a zero-waste society would not mean everyone would become a "green saint" overnight, she said she wanted to see consumers having greater awareness.

A public consultation launched by the last Government on banning a range of materials including food waste, paper, glass and metals from landfill has closed.