Examination of Witnesses (Questions 107-119)
COUNCILLOR KAY
TWITCHEN AND
MR GRAHAM
TOMBS
WEDNESDAY 15 JANUARY 2003
Chairman
107. Welcome to our session. I am sorry we are
delayed. As you will understand, we had two votes during the course
of the last session so I am sorry that we will be rather shorter
than originally envisaged. Partly because of that also I have
to nip out and my deputy, Mrs Walley, will take over shortly after
I have introduced myself. Could I also make a point about your
memorandum to us where you ask, quite understandably, why two
House of Commons Committees are tackling this question of waste
at the moment? The answer is the Select Committees of the House
of Commons do co-operate with each other; we are an audit committee
and we are looking particularly at auditing exactly what the Government's
performance has been against the targets and against its objectives
so far, and our fellow Committee, the Select Committee of the
Department of Environment, is looking rather more at the future.
So that is the way we are trying to define it and perhaps that
will be helpful in answering the questions we put to you later
on. Is there anything in particular you would like to add to your
excellent memorandum?
(Ms Twitchen) There is, briefly. I want
to apologise for the fact that Mr Tombs and I are so casually
dressed! The reason is we have come straight from Gatwick airport
because we have been in Germany looking at waste sites and I have
brought you two souvenirs. This bag[2]
started life as civic community waste, household waste collected
from households in Germany, green waste and kitchen waste and
nappies—and when I tell you that in Essex alone we have
a quarter of a million disposable nappies to landfill every day
you can understand that a way of disposing of nappies is a jolly
good idea! The gas has been extracted—
108. What is that?
(Ms Twitchen) It is compost. It has no odour—
Ian Lucas
109. Can we check?
(Ms Twitchen) Yes, you can, but the gas has been extracted
so the value has been taken out of it and now it is a marketable
product. This bag[3]
was mixed household waste that has been again through an anaerobic
digestion process. It is a lower quality and lower grade but classified
by the German authorities as inert so it can be landfilled after
the implementation of the Landfill Directive. What we are suffering
from in this country in terms of forward planning is a lack of
clarity from the Government and DEFRA and DTI in particular about
these classifications. We had it over fridges, we are getting
it over long-term waste management provision, and it is very difficult
to know what we as local authorities are supposed to do with waste
to end up complying with all the various European regulations
when we do not have the output specifications that we need to
work to. The Germans have already done it and got their plants
up and running and we have to get there as well.
Gregory Barker
110. Which plant was it that you visited?
(Mr Tombs) Brecht in Belgium and Bassum in northern
Germany.
Chairman: Thank you for hastening on your way
from the airport to us. We are very pleased you could get here
on time.
In the absence of the Chairman, Joan Walley
was called to the chair.
Joan Walley
111. Thank you, Ms Twitchen, for demonstrating
that waste to us in such graphic terms that even Gurney's will
be able to record the nature of the point that you are making!
I would like to kick off this part of our inquiry by asking you
what you would regard as sustainable waste management and how
you see it as being part of the reduction in the volume of waste
sent for final disposal, or the best practical option for particular
waste streams? In view of the demonstration you have given us,
are there other issues we should have particular regard to?
(Ms Twitchen) I think there is a European target to
decouple waste increases from GDP and it is Europe-wide so clearly
we share it, and I think that is the key to it: that as people
get more prosperous and as households become smaller the potential
for packaging and dressing everything up increases. There is this
drive towards more household waste being produced and the challenge,
surely, is to halt or minimise that increase. That is one of the
things that Waste Not Want Not talks about doing—the
decoupling of waste growth from growth itself. As far as sustainability
is concerned, I do think it is unfortunate that we use the words
"waste" and "rubbish", because there is very
little in the household waste stream that is really not recoverable.
It is a matter of degree; it is a matter of how much money and
technology you are prepared to apply; and how much trouble you
are prepared to go to to extract the good things. I do a lot of
talks to children and always talk about the Coca Cola can, where
the bauxite is extracted from a mine in India, made into an aluminium
can and filled with Coca Cola—all that transport and energy
poured down somebody's throat in three minutes flat and the can
is casually tossed away and becomes rubbish. It is not rubbish.
It is aluminium, it is a resource, and it must be secured and
collected and reprocessed, and there is very little in the waste
stream that you cannot do that with. The problem is the cost.
Sometimes it is environmental cost because it involves energy
and transport, and sometimes it is forcing people to take the
trouble to separate their waste, and sometimes it is the financial
cost because it costs a lot of money to do it and you end up with
a product that really was not worth spending that much on, but
there are ways to do it for almost every element of the waste
stream.
112. In respect of your recent visit to Germany,
how much do you feel it is part of perception as well in terms
of education and really understanding where things have a value,
not necessarily monetary but towards long-term sustainability?
Moral values, if you like, or judgments.
(Ms Twitchen) I think that is very important and I
think one of the things that was teased out very strongly in this
report, Waste Not Want Not, which I have to keep referring
to because we were very involved in its production and it is an
absolute bible of what is going on, is leadership. We need to
understand as a nation that these are important issues for us.
We have cracked to a large extent the drink/driving issue. It
is not funny any more. Twenty years ago it was quite amusing to
get into a car with six pints and drive erratically but it is
not funny any more. We have tackled dog dirt very substantially
and lead free petrol. All of these are examples of carrots and
sticks, making it worth people's while to change their behaviour
and punishing or penalising them and charging them more money
if they do not, and we can do that with waste in exactly the same
way, I am sure, but we have to have the political will to do it.
Education is two-way—you do not educate people by shouting
at them but by engaging with them.
(Mr Tombs) There is also evidence that it is very
much a social cultural issue. We look at the three parameters
of waste resource management—economic, environmental and
social—yet too often we do not address the social aspect
particularly with the communities and with household waste, where
many householders want to make that social contribution and yet
we still use the term "waste" when in fact it is not
a waste but a resource, and it has a value and a contribution.
It is about engaging in that aspect as well as looking at the
economic and the environmental implications of what we are assessing.
113. Can I finally ask about the waste strategy.
Do you think it should achieve more of what is required by EU
legislation given that we have not yet met what is required by
EU legislation by a long chalk?
(Ms Twitchen) I do see it as an opportunity because
we are lagging so far behind. We can leapfrog and jump over some
of the German and the Dutch and the Belgian plants that were okay
when they were built fifteen or twenty years ago but are now polluting
or inefficient or whatever and we can take advantage of the very
best modern technology because we are starting from a very low
base, but we have to accept the challenge and it is an opportunity.
David Wright
114. I am conscious, as the LGAs argued, that
we have not made significant progress in relation to the Waste
Strategy 2000 because there is an absence of a strategic plan
within the document. Is that not a bit of a cop-out on behalf
of those collectively involved in terms of delivery? Whether there
is a strategic plan in it or not, should not the organisations
that are signing up to it just get on with the job?
(Ms Twitchen) Yes, they should, but can I give you
one example from Waste Strategy 2000? There was an announcement
made when that strategy was published for £140 million—and
I remember welcoming it, it was wonderful news—to help local
authorities kickstart their recycling schemes, because it is very
key to these things we are talking about. It is the easy bit,
the simple bit, where mainly you need new bins or vans, lorries
or systems or something, so it is front-end loaded in terms of
cost, £140 million shared out between local authorities to
get the thing moving. Two years later we had not got a penny of
that money. It had turned into a challenge fund and we had to
bid. Now that is fine for local authorities like mine, Essex County
Council, who have officers who can be taken off the day job to
put together the bids, but if you are a little local authority
with one officer who does waste and a couple of other things as
well, where is he going to find the time to put together a bid?
So the smaller ones tended to get squeezed out of the process
and the ones that employed consultants to put their bids together
were notably successful, so half the money was distributed. Then
we waited another nine months and there was a different set of
rules, and we once again had to put in bids to get the rest of
the money, which has now been distributed two and three quarter
years after it was announced. That is not very helpful. If we
had had the money there and then, however it had been distributed,
those boxes and vans and systems would be on the streets delivering
recycling, instead of which we have only just got the money and
we are only just getting started.
115. Do those smaller authorities not need to
lift the game a bit, because there is not a large proportion of
council tax currently spent in the area of waste management?
(Ms Twitchen) Maybe they should and a lot of them
are, but they are elected by local people to deliver local services
on the priorities that they make judgments about, and the LGA
does a lot of dissemination of best practice and a lot of encouraging,
and I personally have a bit of a passion for this so I make people's
lives a misery and I make no apology for that, but the LGA will
always respect the right and the duty of individual local authorities
to make their own choices because that is what local government
is about, so I would say yes they should be prioritising recycling
but they are elected by their people to set their own priorities.
(Mr Tombs) It is awfully important to reflect that
also by definition local authorities are creatures of statute,
and where there are competing demands on local authorities then
obviously, when it comes to limited funding, there are issues
there that have to be developed as well, so when we look at the
Waste Strategy and strategic plans and the basis behind that—
Mr Challen
116. On that last answer, are you saying that
if the local democracy decides that waste is not high up the agenda,
the Government should step in with funding and make up the difference?
(Ms Twitchen) No, I am not. I am saying that we have
our funding stream. The EPCS block we get waste management funding
through, which is libraries, local transport and flood defence—and
we all know the demands on everybody to improve flood defence
measures in recent months and years. The increase for next year
on that whole block is going to be 5.3% and that includes inflation,
so it is only a little bit above.
117. Twice the rate of inflation.
(Ms Twitchen) Yes. The year after it is 2.8% and the
year after it is 3.3%. Now in waste management alone we have had
to deal with the changes arising from the Ozone Depleting Substances
Regulations, which is fridges which in Essex cost £958,000
in one year to deal with; the End of Life Vehicles Directive,
which has resulted obliquely in an awful lot of extra abandoned
cars on the streets which we then have to pick up and dispose
of; the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive, which
we fear is going to involve us in an awful lot of extra collection
and disposal cost; the Landfill Directive which we talked about
earlier; and the Animal By Products Order, which has wrought havoc
with most of our green waste collection composting schemes. So
all of those changes we are having to deal with through very small
increases in government funding through our SSA and it does not
stack up. You cannot do it.
David Wright
118. And the bizarre point about that is that
for many people the only service they perceive they get is the
collection of their vehicle or bin, and it is a real problem.
(Ms Twitchen) Yes, but in fact it is education, social
services, street lighting—there is an awful lot of other
stuff that matters to people's quality of life.
119. Absolutely. Are there any other elements
of the overall Waste Strategy 2000 that you can identify as areas
of weakness that you want to raise with the Committee?
(Ms Twitchen) I think the fact that 15 months after
it was announced and welcomed—those of us who are keen and
involved in waste thought, "Hey, this is great. We have got
some ideas and some targets are being announced", and it
was really welcomed—the Secretary of State found it necessary
to call a summit and to implement a year-long strategy review
which a lot of us have worked hard and closely on. We now have
that report but it is a report to Government so now the Government
will comment on it but when is something going to happen? You
tell me!
The Committee suspended from 5.50 pm to 6.14
pm for a division in the House.
2 Ms Twitchen held up a small plastic bag of compost Back
3
Ms Twitchen held up a small plastic bag of compost Back
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