Memorandum by the Shropshire Waste Partnership
(RC 34)
BACKGROUND
This is a response from the partner authorities
in the Shropshire Waste Partnership (SWP). Those partners are:
— Bridgnorth District Council
— Oswestry Borough Council
— North Shropshire District Council
— Shropshire County Council
— South Shropshire District Council
SWP was formally constituted in Autumn 2004
by the signing of a legally binding Constitution and the setting
up of a Joint Committee with Executive powers to discharge the
functions delegated to it by the partner authorities, namely the
collection, treatment and disposal of all municipal waste arising
in the SWP area.
Since then, SWP has been seeking to discharge
those functions through the letting of a strategic and fully integrated
25 year contract supported by PFI credits. SWP intends to award
that contract in the Summer of this year and expects the new integrated
service to start on 1 October 2007.
This response has been prepared by the senior
officers responsible for managing waste in the partner authorities.
Not all of this response should be taken as constituting formal
statements of policy by the Partnership itself since some of the
key issues referred to have not been considered and formally adopted
as policy the Joint Committee. The following text attempts to
make it clear where that is case.
THE WAYS
IN WHICH
LOCAL AUTHORITIES
COLLECT AND
MEASURE WASTE.
Topics which may be considered within this include.
— Collection Methods: the contribution
made to waste minimisation by the timing, frequency and type of
collection in both urban and rural areas and in areas characterised
by differing housing types, such as flats.
— Joint Working, cost sharing and the
potential for co-operation between waste collection authorities.
RESPONSE
The introduction and expansion of alternating
weekly collections (AWC) to all suitable properties appears to
have the potential to encourage waste minimisation, but there
is mixed evidence on whether it has so far occurred in Shropshire.
Even where it has appeared to be successful, such as in South
Shropshire, there has also been an initial trend towards more
black bag waste being taken to the Civic Amenity sites so the
overall trend is less clear. Only hard to reach urban areas and
assisted collection remain on weekly sack collections. A study
into this is currently underway.
What also appears to be the case—but also
not universally seen—is that the introduction of green waste
collection free of charge can increase arisings probably by drawing
some away from home composting, garden bonfires and CA sites.
Waste minimisation would be encouraged if the
occupants of flats with stairs could be provided with paladin
type recycling points as carrying boxes down several flights of
stairs poses a health and safety risk to either the householder
or council operative.
The introduction of AWC the way it has been
used in Shropshire has the potential to minimise waste arisings
in two ways. Firstly, in the initial period, the Partnership has
not viewed AWC as an end in its own right but as merely part of
an overall package of service improvements that are particularly
designed to encourage recycling and composting. Thus most Shropshire
residents now have three stream waste collection, namely dry recycling,
green waste (mixed with kitchen waste and light card in parts)
and black bag waste. What this has done is to put more decisions
on waste into the hands of householders thereby forcing them to
be aware of the different ways of dealing with their own waste.
Secondly, in the long term, we could steadily
reduce the size of the bins offered particularly for black bag
waste. This in itself would force people to consider the amount
of waste they produce although I will stress that this has not
been discussed by the Joint Committee and is not SWP policy.
The Shropshire Waste Partnership believes very
strongly that there are significant benefits to be had by joint
working. In late Summer, 2004, four of the five WCAs in Shropshire
and the WDA joined forces by formally signing a binding constitution
and setting up a Joint Committee charged with organising the discharge
of the waste management functions of the five partners. Soon after
that, SWP started the procurement of a fully integrated long term
contract supported by PFI credits in order to give practical effect
to the desire to realise savings through joint working and SWP
is close to signing that contract. The new contractor is expected
to start delivering the integrated service on 1 October this year.
The benefits of joint working arise in at least
two ways although inevitably one affects the other. Firstly there
are the economies that the integrated management of the various
services generates. The original business case for this project
predicted potential savings of the order of 11-13% on overall
service cost and we have no reason to doubt that we have achieved
that. Secondly, it has driven the partners to adopt a common level
of service, which has not only had the effect of driving performance
up significantly, but this has also produced a unified message
which has had the effect of making the whole service much easier
to promote to the public.
THE CONTRIBUTION
COLLECTION METHODS
MAY MAKE
TOWARDS WASTE
MINIMISATION, EFFECTIVE
RECYCLING AND
THE REDUCTION
OF WASTE
GOING TO
LANDFILL AND
INCINERATION.
Topics which may be considered within this include:
— Information programmes: how the Department
of Communities and Local Government and local authorities can
contribute to reducing the amount of waste reaching collection
through providing information to households, consumers and producers.
— Technology: the contribution of collection
technologies to waste minimisation, reduction and setting.
RESPONSE
Communication and education are key in raising
awareness and bringing about attitudinal and behavioural change.
More needs to be done to reduce packaging at source and pressure
should be brought to bear on the producers and retailers to put
in place effective options for the householder including unwrapping
stations in store (as they have on the continent) and take back
schemes for materials such as cardboard and plastics. Work constantly
needs to be done on informing the public about just how much they
are paying for all the instant garbage that comes with almost
every product, assessing public feeling about it and feeding this
back to the producers.
The problem is that there are nearly 400 waste
authorities in England alone and they are seeking to influence
lifestyle choices that are driven by national and international
forces. Individual groups of authorities—and even effective
groupings of authorities like SWP—cannot be expected to
make significant inroads locally. This can only be achieved by
action at government level and EU level. The Recycle Now campaign
being shown on prime time television seems to have had a real
impact in raising awareness of waste issues and this is to be
applauded but if waste minimisation is the real target then the
next generation of adverts needed to be targeted at that rather
than recycling.
Government also needs to back this up with legislation
and policy that makes waste minimisation a necessity, not an optional
extra. Strengthening the targets under Packaging Directive and
widening the areas covered by the Producer Responsibility principle
would also help and where voluntary initiatives are entered into,
as with the Courtauld Agreement, Government needs to make it clear
there needs to be challenging targets set and that those targets
have to be hit if direct Government intervention is to be avoided.
To encourage the reduction of waste residents
need to be aware of the environmental impact their lifestyles
are having. To continue burying a valuable resource in such an
archaic manner will have major impacts on future generations.
Regular calendars giving collection dates are provided
to residents with additional information on recycling and waste
minimization; these local messages require reinforcing through
national schemes of awareness raising to keep the waste issue
at the top of the national agenda.
The current system of providing kerbside AWC
of two 240 litre wheeled bins one for residual waste and one for
garden waste together with three 38 litre boxes for paper, glass
and cans provides more capacity than the old scheme of two black
bags or weekly collection of a 240 litre wheeled bin. Residents
now have greater capacity to manage their waste but are required
to take ownership of their waste in order to utilize the full
capacity of the service provided.
SWP is not convinced that the choice of collection
technologies will actually have any real bearing on waste quantities
produced. Whilst different ways of collecting it can have a direct
bearing on certain waste streams, such as dry recyclables, we
have no evidence to suggest that they affect overall arisings.
HOW DECISIONS
TAKEN BY
LOCAL AUTHORITIES
ABOUT COLLECTION/
DISPOSAL METHODS
AID OR
CONSTRAIN FUTURE
COLLECTION METHODS
AND MINIMISATION.
Topics which may be considered within this include:
— Planning for future sorting, collection
and disposal facilities.
RESPONSE
Decisions taken by local authorities about methods
of collection and disposal can aid or constrain future collection
methods and minimisation. If decisions by Waste Collection Authorities
(WCAs) are taken independently from decisions by Waste Disposal
Authorities (WDAs) there is the potential problem of a mismatch
between the provision of, disposal and processing infrastructure
and the needs of the WCAs. The WCAs and WDAs need at least to
co-ordinate their decisions on future service development and
planning for the provision of the necessary material recovery
facilities and recycling processors to ensure that any opportunities
are fully realised and resources are used in the most economic
and efficient way.
The lack of co-ordination or integration in
decision making by WCAs and WDAs will at best constrain the effectiveness
of new collection methods and at worst result in opportunities
for reducing waste generation being missed. The WDA needs to have
a clear understanding of the intentions and decision making proposals
of the WCAs in order that the appropriate disposal facilities
can be provided. Similarly the WCAs need to be aware of the WDAs
capacity to bring these facilities on line and thus ensure that
the opportunities to improve collection services are fully utilised
and put in place at the earliest opportunity and at the appropriate
time.
All of these difficulties can of course be overcome
by the sort of formalised joint working arrangements now put in
place by Shropshire Waste Partnership.
FINANCING.
Topics which may be considered within this include:
— The funding of waste collection,
including the implications of variable charging for waste collection.
— Comparative evidence of how charging
affects the minimisation behaviour of businesses who pay for removal
of commercial waste.
RESPONSE
As you would expect to hear from a partnership
of local authorities, the main problems with the funding of waste
management are that there is not enough of it and it is not transparent
what the partner authorities are getting.
There have been various studies over the last
few years into the way costs are expected to rise in waste management
in order for the UK to hit its landfill diversion targets and
those studies have generally predicted a shortfall measured in
billions of pounds over a period of a few years. Although much
of the increase in cost arises from the need to invest in new
facilities, there is nevertheless a significant accompanying increase
in investment in new collection systems as well. These studies
were done before the recent treasury announcement of significant
increases in landfill tax and although this all helps to increase
landfill diversion, there has been little indication so far that
this sort of amount has been added, or will be added, to local
authority funds—or at least there is little confidence in
local government about that it has or will be.
This is partly fuelled by the lack of transparency
on what any increase in the block grant has been allocated to
and whilst we accept that local government generally wishes to
have its funds allocated without ring-fencing or constraints,
this lack of transparency nevertheless makes it impossible to
demonstrate that new burdens have genuinely been covered.
Even where funding is specifically allocated
to cover new burdens, as has happened with the ODS regulations
and the WEEE Directive for example, the amounts actually received
by local authorities rarely seem to cover the burden now being
carried.
We note the reference to the role of variable
charging in financing collection. SWP does not yet have a stated
policy on variable charging but may be appraising the pros and
cons of this in the fullness of time. This is a complex topic
but there are at least four aspects that we would need to consider
if variable charging was to be contemplated.
Firstly, we are mindful of the significant administrative
burden and costs that such a system naturally brings with it and
there would need to be a clear demonstration of the benefits if
such a burden is to be taken on.
Secondly, there are also formidable practical
difficulties in implementing it and again there would need to
be some clear benefits before such a scheme could be adopted.
Thirdly, we would strongly question whether
it should be a seen as a source of additional finance at all.
If we are to avoid charges of raising council tax by stealth,
and to make sure that we get the most good out what is sure to
be a controversial policy, then the system would work best if
it merely redistributed the costs to favour those who put most
effort into waste minimisation and recycling/composting. Thus,
for example, the entire cost of the service could be charged against
the amount of black bag waste put out for collection, with nothing
being billed for recyclable or compostable wastes that are put
out. Under that system, if we therefore received 200,000 tonnes
of waste, consisting of 100,000 tonnes recyclable or compostable
waste and 100,000 tonnes of black bag waste, and the service cost
£20 million to deliver, we could cover the cost of the service
by billing householders £200 per tonne for the black bag
waste they put out. This is offered purely as an example as there
are many other ways of doing this.
What this does illustrate are the practical
difficulties—how do we accurately measure this on a week
by week basis—and administrative difficulties—the
billing of, say, 200,000 households every year.
Fourthly, and finally, we feel there would be
an adverse reaction from the general public which would be difficult
to overcome unless they could be convinced that charging for waste
really was a much better system.
I will, however, stress again that this has
not been formally considered by the Partnership and there are
no immediate plans to do so. The comments are very much preliminary
observations therefore which we hope the Committee will find helpful.
In addition you ask about charging structures
for commercial waste. Although the SWP WCAs do collect commercial
waste, none feel they can point to hard evidence that the scale
of charges does promote waste minimisation. This is not to say
that charging has no effect but is simply an acceptance that it
is not possible to demonstrate a direct correlation between charges
imposed and amount of waste produced.
All businesses of course will seek to minimise
their costs wherever possible and an increase in costs by the
WCAs might be expected to have an effect on where and how they
get it disposed of but this will not necessarily mean a reduction
in waste; it is more likely to simply mean a change in service
provider.
On the other hand, where an increase in cost
covers all service providers—for example with landfill tax—then
sooner or later it will start to have an impact on business attitudes
to the amount of waste produced.
This is very much a financial driver, therefore,
not an environmental one.
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