3 TARGETS AND INTERNATIONAL
COMPARISONS
14. European Union Directives on waste management,
and the mandatory targets they include, are among the main reasons
why so much attention has been focussed on municipal waste management
recently. As described above, the Landfill Directive sets mandatory
targets for the amount of biodegradable waste being of disposed
of in landfill. If the Government makes use of the derogations
available to it under the Directive, the targets (for the United
Kingdom) are a reduction to 75% of 1995 levels by 2010, to 50%
by 2013 and to 35% by 2020.
15. The Government accepts that a critical factor
in meeting these targets will be a reduction in the rate of growth
of waste production. However, so far, one of the main mechanisms
for meeting the Landfill Directive targets has been to set targets
for the recycling or composting of municipal waste. At present
these targets are to recycle or compost at least 25% of household
waste by 2005, 30% by 2010 and 33% by 2015.
16. These are national targets. Statutory performance
standards set targets for individual local authorities. These
targets take into account local difficulties in establishing recycling
because they depend in part on the authorities' past performance.
So, for example, local authorities which recycled less than 5%
of waste in 1998-99 must recycle more than 10% in 2003, but authorities
who were already recycling more than 15% in 1998-99 must recycle
more than 33% now. The targets apply to both disposal and collection
authorities and the Government encourages authorities within the
same disposal authority area to pool their targets and work together
to achieve them.[14]
17. The Government accepts that the United Kingdom
has had a very poor record of waste minimisation and recycling
so far.[15]
The OECD has said that "measures to encourage waste minimisation
[in the UK] remain very weak".[16]
The Strategy Unit stated that household waste in England is growing
at 3% annually, which is faster than the growth in GDP.[17]
Despite the fact that international comparisons of waste and recycling
statistics should be treated with caution,[18]
it is worth noting that a Resource Recovery Forum report indicated
that the United Kingdom recycled 8% of its municipal solid waste
in 1998-99, but high performing countries such as the Netherlands
and Germany were already recycling around 38% in 1996.[19]
18. A 2002 study for the Community Recycling Network
tried to resolve some of the difficulties in making international
comparisons by examining recycling rates of specific material
streams.[20]
The results reflected the pattern for all municipal solid waste.
For example, the United Kingdom recycled 5.7% of organic waste,
but Austria recycled 75%. The United Kingdom figure for paper
and card was higher, at 47%, but was still dwarfed by Germany's
90%.
14 Defra
Guidance on municipal waste strategies, 12 April 2001 Annex A.
See http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/waste. Back
15 Q 350. Back
16 OECD, 2002,
OECD Environmental Performance Reviews: United Kingdom,
p.24. Back
17 Waste
Not, Want Not, p.7. Back
18 The Forum
points out that data collection techniques differ and definitions
of important variables such as 'municipal waste' are not the same
in different countries. Back
19 Resource
Recovery Forum, 2000, Recycling achievement in Europe. Back
20 D. Hogg,
D. Mansell and Network Recycling, 2002, Maximising recycling
rates, tackling residuals. Final Report to the Community Recycling
Network. Back
| 
