Examination of witnesses (Questions 460
- 474)
TUESDAY 10 FEBRUARY 1998
MR BRYAN
BATEMAN, MR
ALAN MCKENDRICK
and MR JOHN
GOODALL
460. In your evidence you mention, I think,
that the Inland Revenue had a windfall of approximately £50
million in 1997?
(Mr Walker) Yes.
461. How would you like to see it recycled
in particular?
(Mr Walker) Certainly from a composting perspective
you could make an argument that organic waste is one of the few
waste streams now which do not have a particular market mechanism
actually to lever funds to pay for either recycling infrastructure
or collection. The landfill tax which specifically targets the
environmental disbenefits that waste causes in landfill should
I think be a priority waste stream to take out of the landfill.
Therefore, I think that there is a justification for actually
saying that landfill tax money should primarily be used for organic
waste. The idea that we came up with was that some of the underspend
for the 1996-97 tax year could actually be diverted into a fund
to replace the supplementary credit approvals which could then
be used in terms of capital grants made available to set up composting
sites, because once a composting site is paid for it is obviously
very land expensive because, for example, you need a site of around
10,000 square metres to do 10,000 tonnes of compost. However,
once you have actually paid for it, it can compete with landfill
and it can compete with other forms of waste disposal, but it
cannot actually compete in terms of capital. Therefore, we suggested
setting up a central fund under the administration of the Department
of the Environment, Transport and the Regions and perhaps the
Environment Agency again to release up to, say, 50 per cent of
funds to a composting application so that it would not give out
100 per cent funds but it would still be a requirement for a local
authority or a waste management company to make a 50 per cent
contribution so that it could actually help pump prime the situation.
462. Now bearing that in mind I am a bit
puzzled as to how the Audit Commission which came up with a note
recently about local authority providing free home composters
suggested there would be a pay back period of less than two years.
Do you agree with that?
(Mr Walker) No.
463. What do they mean by that anyway?
(Mr Walker) Well, I have the Audit Commission
report in front of me. I was surprised to read the findings of
the Audit Commission because I should have thought that they would
have done more research before they actually came to that conclusion.
I work for a firm of consultants as well as being secretary of
the Composting Association and we have carried out some 20 local
authority home composting schemes in the country and we have not
yet been able to detect any statistically significant reduction
in the waste stream arising from a home composting initiative
by a local authority. In other words, Mr Chairman, there has been
no reduction in the amount of waste which has been detected going
to a landfill site or other disposal option. Therefore, actually
to claim that home composting would pay back in less than two
years I think is not true and I think that the Audit Commission
needs to examine its conclusions again on that. We have a simple
formula actually to calculate the effect of a home composting
scheme which relies on three letters, and the first is R for rate,
in other words, the frequency of use. If you give someone a home
composting scheme, how often do they use it, and I think that
David Middlemass would confirm that without major public education
the first week you are given a compost bin, lots of people will
go and use it, but that tails off very quickly and you need a
constant investment of use.
(Mr Middlemass) One failure with composting is
enough to put people off for life.
(Mr Walker) The second, Mr Chairman, is the extent
of material. If you are just composting garden waste, if you give
someone a compost bin and they have already got one, and all that
they then do is to transfer their existing compost bin compost
to their new compost bin, then you have not increased any further
composting; all that you have done is actually to stop that person
going down to a retailer and buying a compost bin. The third thing
that the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions
need to examine, I think, is the benchmark figure. they say that
40 per cent of people with a garden should compost. Nationally
already the figure is about 22 per cent. Well, how do you calculate
that—is it compost once a year, is it compost regularly,
and what materials? I think that the Audit Commission needs to
look at that in greater depth.
464. I am sorry, I am not quite clear here.
Are you saying, as you appear to be saying, bearing in mind your
observations on the waste streams, that the vast majority of local
authorities that give out home composting kits are simply giving
out bins that will remain empty in people's gardens?
(Mr Walker) Or be sold at car boot sales or given
to relatives for Christmas presents.
465. So that someone else then may start
composting?
(Mr Walker) They may be selling their bins to
somebody who already composts so they do not remove any further
material from the waste stream.
(Mr Middlemass) Too often these things appear
on people's doorsteps without any sort of context about why it
is there and the usefulness of doing it.
466. Turning now to the market, could I
also ask you about the question of the compost itself. You mentioned
the need to add into the calculations the market value of compost.
We have heard a lot of evidence about the fact that an awful lot
of compost has no market value at all because of having pollutants
and so on. Now presumably the composting that you are talking
about you would regard as wholly marketable?
(Mr Walker) The compost that is produced from
what we call source aggregation schemes, from separate collections
of organic waste, either from sites or from the kerbside, satisfy
the strictest European Union eco-label criteria for compost, so,
yes, it does meet all standards, but that does not necessarily
mean that there is a market for it. The problem with individual
compost producers is that the costs of entry to that market are
very high and for most local authority schemes they cannot afford
the investment into the market. The biggest market for compost
in the United Kingdom will be agriculture. What needs to be accepted
by compost producers in my opinion is that farmers and agriculture
are not prepared to pay substantial sums per tonne because it
is not competitive with synthetic fertilisers. What they are prepared
to pay though is the transport costs and the spreading costs as
we found, for example, in Somerset with a major compost producer
because farmers will recognise that there are significant advantages
to compost over and above synthetic fertilisers. So once hopefully
a landfill tax further increases the cost of disposal, people
will be able to pay for the cost of composting without having
to factor in, if you like, significant revenue schemes and then
farmers will be in a position to use the material much more extensively.
467. And presumably all the concerns that
you express there are compounded as far as mixed refuse compost
is concerned?
(Mr Walker) I personally do not believe—and
I do not think that the Composting Association believes either—that
there is any market for mixed refuse composting in the United
Kingdom.
468. Surely it must be better than just
landfill?
(Mr Walker) I think landfill mixed refuse compost
is the only thing that it is good for, quite frankly. In the United
Kingdom in the past it would——
469. But it does create an inert landfill?
(Mr Walker) It does, yes. I would not disagree
that mixed refuse compost which is then landfilled is a bad thing
in terms of BPEO for that particular waste stream, but if you
look at all the United Kingdom experience over the last 40 years
you will see that there has not been a successful mixed refuse
composting plant. If you look in Europe currently, there are no
successful mixed refuse composting plants in northern Europe.
In southern Europe, of course, it is slightly different because
they do not have standards for their composts so in other words
you can apply mixed refuse compost whereas in the United Kingdom
you would get into problems with heavy metal, physical contaminants
and so on, so farmers will not apply mixed refuse compost on land
in the United Kingdom.
(Mr Middlemass) Surely though it is getting away
from the point, to focus attention on making an inert substance
for landfill—I mean, why not put the attention towards making
quality compost that can be of use in agriculture, as Michael
Walker says, but also in the domestic market. One of the things
about community composting is that it is a lot easier to regulate
the inputs of your compost and you are going to get a much higher
quality that can go into the horticulture market and garden. That
is one of the things about community composting, that because
people are involved in the process at all stages from giving the
organic waste at the start to receiving compost at the end, you
actually create your own market from the people who provided the
input.
Mr Olner
470. Can you just tell us what percentage
you think that that market is?
(Mr Middlemass) One of the main problems at the
moment is that peat dominates the horticulture market and that
to about 70 per cent of the growing medium, and community compost
has a role in substituting the peat market. You will be aware,
Mr Chairman, that peat extraction has major environmental impacts
on rare species and habitats.
471. Could I just press you a little further.
Would you be producing enough organic compost perhaps to supply
all of the local authorities? As you say, particularly community
composting is very local authority driven and local authorities
usually have parks and recreation grounds.
(Mr Walker) Certainly in terms of Walsall where
I was involved in a study they could produce around 40,000 cubic
metres of green waste a year both from the CA sites and from their
own activity and they then had a demand for about 20,000 cubic
metres of compost, so they were basically neutral in terms of
substituting the material that they were buying in with the material
they could produce. The problem then was actually getting over
the contract culture which was that they had long term contracts
under CCT with contractors who wanted to buy in peat and other
materials that they were familiar with rather than compost which
was actually new material to most of them.
472. So it is a question of if the thing
is managed correctly?
(Mr Walker) There are very large scale markets
in local government and also in central government activities.
For example, the highways agency specifies huge amounts of material
every year in terms of soil improvers, tree planting material
and various other things. However, until recently for reasons
that I do not fully understand they would not include waste derived
compost on their listed materials as an approved product. That
again is something that the Department of the Environment, Transport
and the Regions are addressing, I think, so it shows that if you
can get down to the fundamentals and specify this, there are markets
for compost in the long run.
(Mr Middlemass) Mr Chairman, may I just clarify
that community composting mainly derives from community sector
activities, community sector funding.
473. But they are active partners, are they?
(Mr Middlemass) Yes, sure.
Chairman
474. Right, on that note, may I thank you
both very much for your very interesting evidence.
(Mr Walker) Thank you.
(Mr Middlemass) Thank you.
|
