Speech to SEEDA on waste as 'a resource in the wrong place'
1st November 2007
Waste is changing before our eyes. Just a few years ago the debate on waste centred around the ‘how’ of waste. How can we get whatever households and industry throws out of their bins, into trucks and out of sight as quickly, efficiently and as cheaply as possible. And I have to say, the waste industry did that pretty effectively. By and large, in the 1990s, it took the 335 million tonnes of waste arisings away economically and speedily, and placed the vast bulk of it smartly into holes in the ground.
The debate was largely about whether there would be enough holes to go around .
The Landfill directive changed that - it went into UK law in 2002, but when it came out in Europe it was more about the environmental consequences of waste in the ground, and particularly the mixing of hazardous and non-hazardous waste, than about what we now see waste policy as about - that waste is in reality a resource in the wrong place - and that the last thing you should do with a resource in the wrong place is to put it in an even worse place - namely in a hole in the ground.
It is also now seen - and I think this view of waste is still emerging - as a key element of what we do about climate change; not only in terms of the discharge of highly potent greenhouse gases that accompany landfill - methane from landfill accounts for something like 3% of Britain’s greenhouse gas emissions - but in the offsetting of the use of new energy and hence CO2 emissions, to make new resources when we could save that energy by reusing what we’ve got. And of course, where we can’t re-use the resource in other ways, we can use it - particularly biodegradable waste either to make biogas, or to serve as a carbon neutral fuel for energy production.
All of that is now. At least in the form of good intentions about the future of waste, in national strategy on waste - and that certainly now suffuses the pages of DEFRA’s Waste Strategy 2007.
The challenge for both municipal and commercial waste disposal authorities and companies is subtly changed - how can we get whatever households and industry throws out, out of their bins into trucks and into new forms of resource as quickly efficiently and as cheaply as possible.
But of course there is a new and still in parts unfamiliar challenge to householders and industry: the waste industry will take it away but you have got to stop as far as possible putting it there in the first place.
Well that’s the stirring call to arms: but the question that asks itself almost immediately is yes… but how do we actually do it? After all, we started on this rod relatively recently, and from a low base - we were, and still are the country in Europe most addicted to burying our waste. Even now only Ireland and Greece bury more municipal waste than we do - and at about 375 kilos per person per year we bury twice as much as France does, four times as much as Germany does, and about fifteen times what Sweden buries.
So the landfill directive has set particularly onerous targets for the UK - but the good news is that things are beginning to turn round. We have decoupled economic growth from waste increase, recycling and composting of household waste has quadrupled in the last ten years, we were recycling twice as much packaging waste as we did ten years ago, and the amount of waste going into landfill has fallen by 20% in the municipal sector, and by 14% in the commercial and industrial sector.
But that has to be set against where we want to, need to go - the targets for reduction in biodegradable waste in landfill for example that require us to reduce the proportion of waste arising to 75% of 1995 levels by 2010, 55% by 2013, and 35% by 2020. We are in line to meet the 2010 target, but the periods after that looks difficult - and in any event, we are still not making the progress we should on waste arising - yes its been decoupled from economic growth but waste arising from municipal and business is still growing, albeit slowly.
So what drivers are in place to ensure that we stick to these targets, and how are they likely to impact on local authorities and businesses?
Well to start with I think we all recognise that the early setting of an escalator on waste going to landfill was really to influence behaviour - and therefore the setting of a steeper escalator from 2008 - up at least £8 per tonne per year until 2011 compared with £3 per tonne currently is here to stay, and that will mean that by 2011 the levy on landfill will have doubled from its present cost. There is, of course the side issue of whether, as a green tax, that money stays in the treasury or goes back into enhancing recovery and recycling capacity - I for one welcomed the changeover of the 20% tax foregone in recent escalators to fund business to business recycling and reuse activities such as the funding for BREW, WRAP and NISP, all fine acronyms that I could probably tell you what they stand for if closely challenged. My view is that we need to ensure that more funding from the new escalators goes both into municipal and business recycling projects.
The Landfill Allowance Trading Scheme - LATS is also going to be with us for a long while since it does among other things bring a degree of guarantee about the way that municipal landfill is suppressed - although there will clearly be some problems for a number of local authorities as the settlement points arrive.
Recycling some of the landfill levy is fine, as is the possible windfall of in some instances quite considerable amounts of money for some local authorities when we get to LATS settlement dates, but I hear many authorities saying all this is fine - but all that seems to happen is that we pay for putting the stuff in landfill, and then we have to buy LATS credit because we have, all from the same budgets that we might otherwise use for diverting waste from landfill, and meanwhile because it says so in the 1990 Environmental Protection Act we are duty bound to take away everything the householder throws at us.
Now that’s a caricature because there have been significant changes in household and industry behaviour on waste disposal over recent years - but of course industry has a direct interest now in saving itself costs by looking as it is increasingly doing at the cost to itself of a profligate waste policy - and the performance of industry in diverting its waste from landfill attests to that. Local authorities on the other hand are decoupled from that effect. If you don’t do a thing to minimize your waste, whatever your neighbours do, you get a free ride on their backs by having whatever you choose to put out taken away by law. Households do recycle more - the 2005 household recycling and composting target for 2005 has actually been exceeded and recycling has quadrupled over the last ten years - but it cannot be right in the end that there’s no mechanism that enables rewards for minimisation to be given and penalties to be levied for the free riders.
And that’s why I was very pleased to see that powers to enable Local authorities to do just this, on the basis of schemes that can be operated in the way they think most appropriate will be set out in the Climate Change bill shortly to come in front of Parliament. My prediction is that this will be widespread shortly, despite the best efforts of the Daily Mail, because I do believe that once the case is put, and the scare stories about spies in the bin and so on are seen to be just that, then the sense of such schemes will become apparent, and will win public support.
Because I do think the public is getting the message at last about the imperative of husbanding our resources, and reusing them wherever possible, and are beginning to appreciate just why it is so important.
I think though that there is an onus now both on Government., industry and local authorities to run faster along this route as public support allows them to do. Should we look further at the arrangements that see waste collection and waste disposal authorities dealing with the same waste but with widely different responsibilities and powers? Should the example of Counties like Hampshire- where between Unitaries, Districts and the County they have in effect one authority, and which is making great strides in efficiency and recycling levels as a result- be far more widespread in our municipal waste arrangements?
Should we maintain as we still do with perverse consequences, the distinction between municipal and industrial waste streams so that more than a few municipal authorities appear to end up actively discouraging joint streams of municipal and commercial waste because they might thereby pollute their targets for municipal waste recycling or landfill diversion?
Should we effectively excuse construction waste from the targets the rest of the waste stream is subject to? The government is considering a target of halving the amount of construction waste going to landfill by 2012. But we know that, for example, about 7.5 million tonnes of wood, mostly from construction goes into landfill each year, and sits there emitting methane for many many years. Even if we extracted one third of that from landfill and used it for energy production, we would save thousands of tonnes of CO2 per year.
And this, I think sums up my theme of waste as a resource in the wrong place. Personally, I would put measures in place simply to ban wood from entering landfill, as has happened in Germany. The immediate impact that would have on the development of biomass power schemes, or on emissions saving co-firing of wood and other forms of refuse derived fuel would be immense. And in a development seemingly little noticed in the waste world, the Energy Review has introduced what are called double RECs (Renewable Energy Certificates) and the income that comes from them, for quality Combined Heat and Power programmes using liquid or solid biomass. So money is now to be made by developing these routes.
There is a long way to go - and not least of the challenges for regions - and particularly the south East will be how to construct the range of facilities that will deal with this very different way of dealing with waste - the MRFs the handling stations, the energy from caste schemes, the anaerobic digesters and pyrolysis plants that will supersede old style incineration as a diversion technique - ands how to get the public, if not to love them, at least to accept that they are a necessary part of daily life, and are not some dreadful imposition designed to annoy them in their daily lives. But in the end it is all of a piece - if you believe that you can throw anything you like away and that so long as you pay your way, someone will take it away - a long way away and deal with it for you, then you will not see the connection between you and the anaerobic digester that someone is proposing to build in your neighbourhood. The challenge - of cementing that connection, of making recycling and all that goes with it a part of everyday life- remains to be won, but it has to, and it has to soon.
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More information
1. This speech was given at the South East England Regional Development Agency's 'Waste Summit' on 1st November 2007.