Memorandum submitted by the Green Alliance
(X28)
Green Alliance has been examining waste policy
and practice since 1997. In 2002 we published Creative
Policy Packages for Waste: Lessons for the UK[75]which
reported on how other countries had gone about implementing radical
waste strategies. We concluded that the UK has struggled to improve
recycling rates, and has not made much impression on waste prevention,
because it has failed to set ambitious targets, and, apart from
the landfill tax, has not deployed sufficiently effective instruments.
We are currently examining the potential to
move from producer responsibility to integrated product policy.
Emerging from this work are some important lessons on how we can
link traditional waste management policy and its focus on end
of pipe disposal to a more ambitious desire to move to sustainable
resource use. In our view, the Government should set an explicit
goal of achieving a "closed loop" economy and put in
place the instruments that will deliver it. Government interventions
to date have tackled diverse parts of the problem, but have not
amounted to a coherent, target-driven package that will achieve
the necessary change.
We feel there are six priority areas that need
to be addressed:
1. The year-on-year rise in landfill tax
is helping to shift investment decisions, but it needs to be higher
and faster to overcome industry feeling that recycling is still
essentially an uneconomic activity. There should be a combined
"disposal" tax that also applies to incineration, especially
without energy recovery. The aim of this tax should be to make
the price of waste management reflect the waste hierarchy—on
its own, "internalising costs" is not necessarily enough
to change behaviour, particularly if the economics don't stack
up.
2. We are still missing market development
measures that would create a pull for recyclates, helping to "close
the loop". Current initiatives collect materials for reprocessing
but don't create sufficient incentive for them to be used in the
manufacture of new products. This lack of pull has been, and will
continue to be, a problem for the producer responsibility initiatives.
Government procurement is potentially a powerful driver and must
continue to improve and to lead. A broader variety of fiscal instruments
should be examined as part of reviving the Government's Green
Tax agenda. Consideration of virgin materials taxes should be
a priority to level the playing field for secondary materials.
3. Local authorities must be given the powers
to introduce economic incentives for householders to reduce waste
if they are to take waste as seriously as they need to. Introduction
of economic incentives is a vital step in raising public awareness
of waste and broader consumption issues. These should be enabling
powers, not a requirement to implement schemes, and should only
be used after good quality kerbside recycling facilities are already
in place.
4. The UK must take a positive stance on
the Energy Using Products Directive (EUP), because this could
create the foundation of a future framework for genuinely integrated
product policy (IPP). Having lagged behind on recycling performance,
EUP and IPP are areas where the UK has the chance to take a lead.
The Defra/DTI joint working on this Directive is to be welcomed,
and action should be seen as giving the UK competitive advantage,
as few other countries have yet recognised the challenge and opportunities
the agenda presents.
5. Better enforcement is needed on waste
issues—from flytipping to the "Essential Requirements"
of the Packaging Directive. The latter gives Trading Standards
Officers the powers to prosecute producers in cases of overpackaging,
but are currently under-resourced and under-used.
6. We are still waiting for a policy follow-up
to the Review of Environmental and Health Effects of Waste Management
published by the Government in May 2004. The Government's assertion
that the health impacts of waste are "minimal" will
be counter-intuitive for most people, and, given the Royal Society's
concerns about the quality of the data, the Government must make
it very clear how this report is informing policy decisions.
November 2004
75 Available for free download from the Green Alliance
website at: http://www.greenalliance.org.uk/ourwork/CreativeWasteProject_page80.aspx Back
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