Latest news with #wasteReduction
Telegraph
3 days ago
- Business
- Telegraph
Reform launches ‘Doge' council unit
Reform UK will launch a new 'Doge' council unit to crack down on waste and inefficiency. Nigel Farage's party has assembled a team of software engineers, data analysts and forensic auditors, which will visit each of the 10 councils Reform controls – starting with Kent on Monday – to look at ways to save money. The group, appointed by Zia Yusuf, the Reform chairman, is modelled on Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency in the US. It will be headed by a leading tech entrepreneur. Reform has not yet named him, although the party says he has a specialism in data analytics and has also been a turnaround chief executive. The announcement comes a month after Reform gained its first foothold in local government when it seized control of eight local authorities from the Tories and two from Labour. Mr Yusuf said: 'For too long, British taxpayers have watched their money vanish into a black hole. Their taxes keep going up, their bin collections keep getting less frequent, potholes remain unfixed, their local services keep getting cut. 'Reform won a historic victory on a mandate to change this. As promised, we have created a UK Doge to identify and cut wasteful spending of taxpayer money. Our team will use cutting edge technology and deliver real value for voters.' Mr Farage told the BBC after the local elections: 'I think every county needs a Doge. I think local government has gone under the radar for too long. 'We've seen the high-profile cases of Croydon, of Thurrock, where they've gone bankrupt, Birmingham indeed, where they've gone bankrupt.' Last week, Mr Musk stepped down from his role in the Trump administration, days after he had attacked the US president's spending plan by claiming it 'undermines' his Doge work. The Reform 'Doge' team's first visit will be to Kent, where it won more than two thirds of the seats in May. The county council has a gross budget of more than £2.5 billion. Linden Kemkaran, the Reform council leader, has written to Amanda Beer, the chief executive, to announce her intention to undertake a review of the council's 'financial management, procurement activity, and associated governance arrangements'. 'This review is part of Reform's commitment to transparency, accountability, the prudent management of public funds and the highest standards in public life,' the letter states. 'Conducting this work was a core part of Reform's local manifesto. We believe it is in the public interest to ensure that the council's financial and procurement systems are robust, lawful, and value-driven. To that end, Kent council has appointed the Doge team, a unit of software engineers, data analysts and forensic auditors to conduct this review on our behalf.' The review will look at contractual arrangements with suppliers and consultants, all capital expenditure, any off-book or contingent liabilities, the use of reserves and financial resilience, and any problems flagged by internal or external auditors in the last three years. The team has demanded access to all relevant documents, reports, records, data, minutes and correspondence, as well as 'any internal investigations or whistleblowing reports relevant to financial matters'. The letter warns: 'Should you resist this request, we are ready to pass a council motion to compel the same and will consider any obstruction of our councillors duties to be gross misconduct. We trust this will not be required.' Last week, Reform announced plans to axe gold-plated pension schemes for council staff. Richard Tice, the deputy leader, said final-salary pension schemes would end in the councils it now controls, describing them as an 'outrage'. He said the money would be redirected to improving council services such as bin collections. The party has also pledged to reduce spending on diversity, equality and inclusion schemes and called for an attack on government waste to save £5 out of every £100.
Fast Company
28-05-2025
- Business
- Fast Company
How this marathon runner has spared 900,000 disposable cups from landfill
Kristina Smithe was running the California International Marathon in 2019, grabbing cups of water to stay hydrated, when she started to think about how much waste such events produce. On the flight home, she did the math: 9,000 runners, 17 aid stations, and something like 150,000 cups used once and thrown away. 'I was just shocked that, even in California, it's not sustainable,' Smithe said. That sparked her idea for something more durable—a lightweight, pliable silicone cup that could be used again and again. After working out a design, Smithe ordered her first shipment and tested them at a race in 2021. Now her business, Hiccup Earth, has 70,000 cups that Smithe rents out to interested races to replace the typical white paper cups that can pile up like snowdrifts at busy water stops. Billions of disposable cups are used around the world each year. These cups are often made of plastic, but even if they are made of paper, they typically have a plastic lining that makes it difficult for them to biodegrade. And making these cups, and disposing or burning them, generates planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions. 'That's just a small subset of the amount of plastic waste that we produce, but it's a pretty visible one,' said Sarah Gleeson, solutions research manager and plastics waste expert at climate nonprofit Project Drawdown. 'It's something that generates a lot of waste, and waste—depending on what exactly it's made of—can really last in landfills for hundreds of years.' As she was getting her business off the ground, Smithe emailed race directors to ask if their event used disposable cups. 'The answer was always yes,' she said. Her response: 'If you're looking for a sustainable solution, I have one.' Now, she rents out the cups by the thousand, driving them to events in massive totes and leaving bins with the company logo for collection after use. Smithe picks up the used cups and washes them in a proprietary dishwasher. At the PNC Women Run the Cities race in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, in early May, Smithe helped quench the thirst of thousands of runners, dropping off 17-gallon tote bags full of her flexible blue cups. After that race, Smithe, 35, estimated she's taken her cups to 137 races and spared 902,000 disposable ones from the landfill. She also says her washing process needs only 30 gallons (114 liters) of water per 1,500 cups. An average efficient household dishwasher uses three to five gallons (11 to 19 liters) for far fewer dishes. 'It's just a solution to a problem that's long overdue,' Smithe said. One trade-off is that the cup rentals cost race directors more than other options. Disposable cups might run just a few cents each, while 10,000 Hiccup cups would rent for about 15 cents each. That price drops if more cups are needed. Gleeson, of Project Drawdown, sees the reusable cups as just one of many ways that innovators are looking to cut down on waste. Such solutions often have to be rooted in convenience and grounded in local or small applications to get more people to adopt them. Some cities, for instance, are experimenting with reusable food takeout containers that customers return to nearby drop-off spots later on. While no one solution can fully tackle the problem, 'The scalability is there,' Gleeson said. 'I think in general, high adoption of these kinds of solutions is what is able to bring costs down and really maximize environmental benefits that you could get.'
New York Times
16-05-2025
- Business
- New York Times
DOGE Seeks to Investigate Another Government Budget Watchdog
Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency is now seeking to investigate a federal agency with a mission similar to its own: the Government Accountability Office, which has been hunting for waste and inefficiency in government since the 1920s. The Government Accountability Office said in a statement on Friday that it had rejected a request from Mr. Musk's group to 'assign a team' to the century-old budget agency. 'As a legislative branch agency, G.A.O. is not subject to executive orders and has therefore declined any requests to have a DOGE team assigned,' the agency said in its statement. A spokeswoman for the Government Accountability Office declined to say when the agency was first contacted by Mr. Musk's group. A spokesman for Mr. Musk's group did not immediately reply to a request for comment. The confrontation between the two watchdog groups was first reported by Wired. Mr. Musk's group has audited agencies across government, and claims to have found $170 billion in savings, although that figure is inflated by errors, guesswork and zombie contracts that were killed but later reinstated. On the surface, the Government Accountability Office would seem less like a target and more like an ally of Mr. Musk's group. The office audits federal programs for waste, fraud and mismanagement. Its budget is about $900 million, but the agency says it saves $76 for every dollar invested in its work. But now the accountability office could become a roadblock for President Trump, who set Mr. Musk's group in motion. The older watchdog agency, led by Comptroller General Gene L. Dodaro, finds itself at the center of a brewing battle over a power known as impoundment, the ability of the president to halt the delivery of funds that have been appropriated by Congress. In his sweeping reconfiguration of American government, Mr. Trump has claimed he has vast powers to direct the course of the nation's spending. He and his leading budget adviser, Russell T. Vought, maintain that a 1970s law restricting impoundment is unconstitutional, setting up a potential legal clash around the power over the nation's purse. Still, the statute empowers the Government Accountability Office to investigate potential violations, and in late April, Mr. Dodaro acknowledged his team had opened more than three dozen probes into reports that the Trump administration illegally withheld congressionally authorized funds. 'We're trying to get information from the agencies about what their legal position is for not expending the money,' Mr. Dodaro told the Senate at a hearing, as he acknowledged some agencies had been 'unresponsive' to the inquiries. Mr. Dodaro did not signal how his office might proceed, but it has the power under law to sue the administration for violations. A similar showdown arose at the end of Mr. Trump's first term, as Democrats moved to impeach him. The Government Accountability Office found that the administration had violated the law by illegally withholding roughly $400 million in aid to Ukraine in defiance of Congress, though the administration claimed it had acted lawfully. Senator Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, said in a statement that Mr. Musk's group has no power over the older watchdog group. 'The law is crystal clear: G.A.O. is a legislative branch agency not subject to DOGE or the president's whims,' Ms. Murray said in a statement. 'It is an indispensable, impartial government watchdog, and its independence must remain. My message to Elon and DOGE: get lost.' Mr. Trump has already faced pushback from legislators of both parties over his effort to take over another congressional institution: the Library of Congress. Mr. Trump recently fired the librarian of Congress before the end of her term, and sought to replace her with his former personal lawyer, now a top official at the Department of Justice.
