Select Committee on Communities and Local Government Committee Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 100 - 114)

MONDAY 21 MAY 2007

MR JOHN DUFFY AND MR PETE DAW

  Q100  Chair: Can we deal with the other table you have produced which is about total waste managed at sites accepting municipal waste from London where you used it to demonstrate that there is a lot more London waste, but it is not London waste it is total waste going to sites that are used by London. The Government has said the numbers have gone up but that is because there are fewer landfill sites and therefore more waste is coming to these. There are others out there which were not accepting London waste that are not now accepting any waste and that waste is added in. Is that the Government's argument?

  Mr Daw: That is the Government's argument but they did not back that up with any evidence to justify that, such as the closure of sites. Anecdotally it suggests, as you say, that waste going to those sites that are taking waste from London has risen from 6.2 million tonnes in 2003 (this is total waste, so commercial waste and municipal waste) and that has risen to 7.7 million tonnes in 2005 whilst in the same timeframe municipal waste from London has decreased quite dramatically.

  Q101  Chair: It is actually possible to look at the Environment Agency records and know how much of this 6.2 million has come from London and how much of the 7.6 has come from London. Have you done that?

  Mr Daw: Unfortunately it is not possible to do that. Because of the way that data is collected, the origin of the waste, when it is accepted at site is not recorded.

  Q102  Chair: I asked some parliamentary written questions about a waste tip near me and that is how I started on all this because I do know from the records in the parliamentary written questions it lists where the waste came from at that landfill site so it would be perfectly possible to do it for all this lot.

  Mr Daw: We were unable to get that detail.

  Q103  Martin Horwood: I cannot see how this chart can be of any help at all unless you know that percentage. You cannot draw any conclusion from it otherwise

  Mr Duffy: You would expect to see a drop in waste going out. In London we are the largest proportion of waste going to these sites so you would expect to see some drop, not a 1.5 million rise. I do not think the Government has said it was caused by other landfills closing; it said it could be caused by other landfills closing or it could be waste coming from somewhere else. It still begs the question why are the Home Counties collecting all this waste from other places? Whether it is coming from wherever it is, if it is not helping the landfill diversion for the Home Counties, then bringing it in from elsewhere is a problem.

  Mr Daw: While we do not know exactly the figures from London, what we do know is that London is reporting 2.6 million tonnes of municipal waste now. Municipal waste is going to landfill and the commercial sector is producing around seven million tonnes of waste of which about 60% is going to landfill. I would suggest a sizeable majority of that waste is probably coming from London.

  Q104  Martin Horwood: You are not suggesting that the percentage going to landfill from London is necessarily increasing are you? That would be against all the evidence of recycling rates increasing that we are getting from all over the country.

  Mr Duffy: We feel that any changes are not as good as the statistics are suggesting. If you look at what people say they are diverting then you look at the landfill sites, they do not add up together. We are looking to try to get some more detail on how that happens. We have put a number of questions in to the Government; we have not always got the right statistics back so we are trying to prod that along. On a basic level we think that if it was being diverted it would show some downward movement in the selected landfill sites. Our view is that commercial waste is rising in London and it is going direct to these landfill sites.

  Mr Daw: Recycling is increasing and local authorities are collecting more. That has doubled over the last four or five years in London but, as I said, there is 7 million tonnes of commercial waste there which does not have the same targets in place and currently the landfill tax we do not feel is high enough to actually make them make the choice to switch to recycling. The inference is that we think much of that waste is still going to landfill.

  Q105  Chair: If this loophole does exist in the way that you have been describing it, what would you suggest the Government does to close it? Secondly, if there is much less incentive on the commercial sector to avoid going to landfill than the domestic sector what would you suggest to encourage industry to be as helpful to the environment as people are being?

  Mr Duffy: I think this scheme would have to be extended to the private sector, the LATS scheme. We think a single waste authority for London is the best idea to go forward. We would say that, but the real issue is that you need to get agreement with the areas outside London so you know your agreed measurements on what waste is coming from London, not an assumption that people from London are diverting waste which is probably their right to do sometimes. We need an agreement that overall we are trying to cut that waste from London. Clearly we need to do better recycling with the commercial waste in London. The fact that at the moment we are recycling 9% is not acceptable; we could do quite a lot better on that with a single waste authority. Then you have to enforce the rules. I do not think that just changing statistics is a way forward; you actually have to do things that change the issues around climate change and transport movement. All these things are very important to how you do that.

  Mr Daw: On the issue of what government can do I believe the Chair raised it in parliamentary questions and the response on this issue was: "My Department does not hold information on the number of London boroughs that have sold their trade waste portfolios to the private sector. London boroughs are not required to provide an estimate of annual tonnages for trade waste." I would suggest there is a starting point there.

  Q106  Anne Main: It seems to be coming across loud and clear that trade waste is becoming one of the things that ought to be re-examined because the poor old householder is being asked to look at their contribution to landfill. Would you agree that you need to be slightly re-focusing more onto trade waste rather than possibly onto the householder?

  Mr Duffy: In London the amount of commercial waste is a massive issue. What they collect at the moment is 21% of the four million tonnes but it could be more than that. We could be aggressive and actually get more of this commercial waste and recycle it. At the moment why would anyone try to get this waste? If I were a local authority officer I would leave it alone; you do not really want it on your books, you want it off the books. The whole idea of what you should do with commercial waste is not being seriously looked at by local authorities because it does not help them. It will not help them with their LATS targets so it is best to ignore it. If I were with the local authority I would say to my officers, "Ignore that waste".

  Q107  Anne Main: It is a perverse disincentive then because of the targets.

  Mr Duffy: Yes.

  Q108  Anne Main: Therefore are you suggesting we should look at how we calculate waste targets?

  Mr Duffy: I actually think you ought to make it a level playing field, that the private sector has to pay the same issue on LATS as the local authority. That would be one of the ways forward.

  Q109  Chair: With LATS, if I have got my head round it properly, a local authority is given a figure that it cannot go above so you could not use the same scheme for business could you?

  Mr Daw: Each authority is given a permitted allowance and if it exceeds that it has to buy permits from an authority which has met its targets and has an excess to sell, or it faces a fine.

  Q110  Chair: How would that work for business?

  Mr Duffy: If your service is collecting waste you would have to recycle so much. It would be fairly similar—they would only have allowances for so much waste.

  Q111  Martin Horwood: You would have to calculate that for each business.

  Mr Duffy: You need a waste transfer note to transfer waste; you cannot just transfer waste as it is. You would look at increasing their targets on recycling; that would be one of the ways forward. You can then find out how much waste they have collected and how much they have diverted from landfill through recycling systems.

  Mr Daw: It is important that the existing rules to the existing scheme for municipal waste are properly enforced by the Environment Agency and Defra. That is the starting point I think.

  Q112  Anne Main: So you have concerns about important issues with the current scheme.

  Mr Daw: I would suggest that the figures suggest there is an issue there that needs to be looked at.

  Mr Duffy: It is generally just about diverting from landfills. The whole idea is not to change the vehicle that it arrives at a landfill site in; it is actually to stop it going to that landfill. That is what we are trying to achieve.

  Q113  Martin Horwood: The common characteristic of most capital trade schemes from the European Emissions Trading Scheme downwards is that you start with a relatively small number of large offenders if you like, whereas this seems to have a potential to become incredibly diverse and complicated.

  Mr Duffy: If we diverted 21% of waste away from the Home Counties (but we will not have) 21% of the waste would still be going to the Home Counties to a landfill but it will not be on the books of the local authorities and that is the worry. That is the worry, that if this trend continues it will just be diverted away.

  Mr Daw: We have heard about the costs of LATS and the risks of fines. We estimate that to be around £1.7 billion liability for the whole of London between now and 2020 so there really is an incentive should things get tight, if the structures are not in place, if recycle rates are not increased, to look at alternatives. As the pressure continues to ramp up I think this may become more of an issue.

  Q114  Chair: Your contention is that it is more of a problem in London because the boroughs were collecting a higher proportion of commercial waste in the first place than the rest of the country and therefore there is more space for them to shift it off the blocks.

  Mr Daw: Potentially, yes.

  Chair: Thank you very much.





 
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