Don’t throw this article away!

Times are changing in the world of waste. Not so long ago, it was fairly safe to conclude that matters were relatively simple and straightforward, not to mention boring. The binmen would collect the rubbish, the Council would transport it from the depot to a large hole in the ground and that would be it. The Council trucks might be joined by other trucks tipping commercial waste into the same hole. No-one worried much: when the hole was full it was covered over with earth and another hole started to be filled. Later some holes started emitting methane to the embarrassment of building companies building houses on redundant tipping sites, but that too, could be dealt with by venting the methane into the atmosphere.

As a result, we became addicted as a nation to filling holes with waste. Currently almost 80% of domestic waste ends up in such holes – a far higher proportion than anywhere else in Europe.

But now, waste is becoming much more complex, and from the point of view of policy, much more interesting. This is so for several straightforward reasons. Firstly, we are running out of holes in the UK. Where are we going to put it all? Secondly, the amount of waste we produce keeps going up – roughly 3% more per year; so even though some reduction in the percentage of waste going to landfill has been achieved over the past few years the amount going in keeps expanding. So how do we decouple economic growth from waste production? Must it keep rising forever? Thirdly, combating climate change is now a firmly established aim of UK Government policy and we are signed up to achieve the Kyoto protocol target of a 10% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2010. So far we’ve achieved most of the target by switching power generation to gas but the next bit gets harder – and the energy involved in producing and then burying both organic and inorganic packaging waste and by-products represents an enormous contribution to greenhouse gas emission, not to mention the fact that methane is a far far more potent greenhouse gas than CO2!

So as a country we have to change our ways. The challenge is how to do it: literally we have to change the habits of a lifetime, and we should be under no illusion about how difficult that will be. The change is at last now signposted by targets: we are now committed as a country to a number of them. The Government has set up a ‘hierarchy of waste’ – a pyramid of destination for waste which reflects in ascending order what we might call the desirability of outcome. At the top we should aim simply to produce less – to minimise waste. If we are dealing with waste that has been produced next we might consider how it can be reused, and if not then how it might be recycled as raw material for other processes. Failing that we might burn it and recover the energy for other uses. Bottom of the heap is, of course the love of our collective waste lives, landfill.

And there are targets for all these processes: we are, for example, to recycle or compost at least 30% of household waste by 2010. This target forms a proportion of a larger target – that by the same year we are to recover ‘value’ (through reusing, recycling, creating energy) from 45% of the waste stream. If we are to do this it will entail extracting a substantial element of waste before it gets to the gate of the landfill tipping site. Landfill should therefore decrease – and yes – there is a target for this: a 65% reduction in landfill by 2020. All this, however, simply provides better outcomes for waste: it still keeps coming. Over the same period, the target is to progressively reduce the increase per year and by 2010 start seriously reducing the amount we discard.

Having this chain of targets is in itself a step forward, but how do we actually achieve them? This is the problem currently confronting the policymakers. It will, for sure, involve a great deal more than encouraging a few more people to take a few more bottles to the bottlebank, important though this is: a massive change in our waste habits is needed over a relatively short period.

The European Union has set tough targets for the reduction of waste going to landfill in its recent directive, and the UK Government has responded with the long-standing ‘landfill levy’ – a tax on each ton of waste arriving at the landfill site. What is newer is that this tax is likely to rise steeply after 2005: it has in recent years been going up by £1 a year. This may in future rise by £3 per year or more. The aim is to make it progressively more worthwhile to do something else with waste other than take it to the tip; and the evidence is that it is beginning to work. But there is a problem: commercial companies faced with the charge can institute alternative practices for waste and are increasingly doing so.Local Authorities, on the other hand are under a legal obligation to take away whatever waste the householder puts out, and will then be faced with a steep increase in costs paid for from the same budget that they might use to collect waste in different ways or sort it out for recycling once collected.

Recent legislation piloted through as a private members Bill by Joan Ruddock MP will require Local Authorities to offer separated kerbside collection facilities to all households, but we should not ignore the reality that this will add to the cost of waste collection. Changes have been made to the fund that has existed for some time to recycle part of the proceeds of the landfill levy, and after 2005 for the first time, Local Authorities will be able to access the money for recycling schemes.

Another piece of legislation (the Waste and Emissions Trading Bill) will introduce a system of ‘trading’ between Local Authorities as far as landfill is concerned. Those authorities doing well and falling below their landfill ‘quota’ will be able to ‘trade’ the difference with those that are doing less well, within an overall ‘corset’ of a reducing overall quota.

The problem with this otherwise admirable system is that Local Authorities may be tempted to achieve their targets by burning waste rather than burying it. Even now, there are some large, long term projects in the pipeline which may well commit local authorities, through commercial contracts with waste companies, to burn much of their waste for many years ahead. If this happens on a widespread basis, little will be achieved in terms of moving waste management significantly up the hierarchy – and little will be done on CO2 emissions.

The next challenge in waste is therefore to lock waste management fully into recycling, reuse and reduction. Other policy instruments, such as the packaging regulations, now being tightened and requiring commercial companies to recover increasing proportions of the packaging they deploy, and the emergence of government –sponsored organisations such as WRAP which aims to stimulate markets for products made from waste will make a contribution, as will the development of co-firing, where for example cement can be made by using shredded tyres as a fuel rather than oil. These kinds of development, alongside the increasing cost of disposal, should over time create value and jobs for those companies adopting systematic waste recovery techniques.

More ways of achieving this fundamental change-around in waste management will undoubtedly be needed, but as we are already seeing, legislation and regulation can only do so much. We have all had a great party over the last century in consuming and throwing away: now between us we’ve got to clear up the mess. In this case it is no metaphor: it’s an Albert Hall full of mess being deposited every hour 365 days a year, unless we get a grip on it.

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