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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