Conclusions and recommendations
Omissions from the Waste Strategy
1. Defra has belatedly focused its attention on commercial and industrial waste policy but its recent statement failed to set firm targets for these sectors. We remain unconvinced that current policies for tackling commercial and industrial waste are sufficiently robust to drive maximum improvement in these sectors. There are insufficient mechanisms specific to these sectors, rather a reliance on general incentives such as avoidance of landfill tax and economic benefits from lower wastage levels. For example, while Defra's proposal to include commercial waste in targets set for the UK under the Landfill Directive is a welcome indication of its ambition for the sector, this will not in itself drive action. Nor does this entail the setting of specific targets for more sustainable management of commercial waste which is diverted from landfill. The department should urgently hold a round table with representatives from commerce and industry to develop waste reduction, re-use and recycling benchmarks to provide companies with a better idea of what they can be expected to achieve. The department should also develop an action plan setting out the steps the sector can take to achieve these levels.
(Paragraph 16)
2. Businesses must demonstrate to customers that they are improving their recycling rates. Retail outlets, restaurants and pubs should be required to publish information on what they are doing to improve their waste management and increase recycling.
(Paragraph 17)
3. Defra's lack of up-to-date data on the commercial and industrial waste streams has hampered the development of waste reduction policies for this sector and made it very difficult to monitor progress in this area. Defra must now commit itself to developing a full and up-to-date data set for this sector. Whilst we welcome the department's commitment for a new "survey of the sector", one-off activity is no substitute for the establishment of regular information flows. We recommend that Defra set out an action plan on how it will collate the detailed data which is already being collected for operational purposes in order to provide performance information for the sector.
(Paragraph 18)
Landfill ban
4. Whilst we welcome the announcement that Defra will consult in 2010 on banning certain substances from landfill, we believe it is being too generous in allowing up to another decade to pass before these materials are not allowed to be landfilled. Defra should have the courage of its convictions and go for a more ambitious timescale to implement this change by 2015.
(Paragraph 22)
Waste prevention
5. Defra should publish, within six months of the completion of the Zero Waste Places pilots, a comprehensive strategy on waste prevention with a clear set of timetables and targets. The Waste Strategy Stakeholder Group should give priority in its work programme to the provision of waste prevention advice to ensure that Defra gives prevention sufficient attention in its waste policies.
(Paragraph 27)
Preventing retail waste
6. Retailers with a turnover greater than £50 million per annum should be required to publish details of their waste prevention strategies, including details of the targets they have set for waste reduction by type of material.
(Paragraph 31)
Single use carrier bags
7. We congratulate retailers on their progress to date to reduce the use of both plastic and paper single use carrier bags but, given the billions still being given out each year, greater effort to reduce their use is required. Defra should work with retailers to ensure that all adopt the practice of exemplar companies which have removed bags from check-outs and are promoting low-cost, re-usable bags. The British Retail Consortium should work with its members to help UK retailers achieve a minimum bag reduction target of 60% by 2012.
(Paragraph 35)
Minimising food waste
8. We welcome moves by retailers to offer customers the choice of buying produce which, for aesthetic reasons, cannot be marketed as top category products. We urge all retailers to develop a wide range of such products for sale. We also urge all retailers to distribute to charities such as Fareshare any food which can legally and safely be used and to give explicit permission to their suppliers to do likewise with branded products.
(Paragraph 39)
9. We recommend that Defra requires food retailers and manufacturers to report the tonnages of food waste from their businesses at least on an annual basis. Defra should also work with the food industry to ensure that retailers give suppliers sufficient flexibility to be able to minimise wastage, including disseminating examples of industry best practice.
(Paragraph 40)
Household waste re-use and recycling
10. We welcome progress that has been made nationally on increasing levels of household recycling. We recommend that the Government set a more ambitious recycling target of 50% of household waste to be recycled by 2015 and 60% by 2020. It should also commission a report to explain the reasons for significant differences in the rates of recycling and prepare an action plan to assist poor performing local authorities to improve their domestic recycling levels. The Government should require local authorities to provide all householders with information on an annual basis explaining what actually happens to domestic waste sent for recycling and the environmental impact of their recycling activities. This information should also be collated nationally so that best practice can be disseminated.
(Paragraph 47)
11. Although it is important that maximum levels of re-use and recycling of waste are achieved, this must not be at the expense of efforts at national and local level to prevent waste arising in the first place.
(Paragraph 48)
Case study—engaging the public in textile
re-use and recycling
12. We support the Government's work to increase the levels of re-use and recycling of clothing. We recommend that Defra encourage retailers to do more to help customers recycle their clothes, for example by providing information in stores on facilities available at civic amenity sites, local drop bins, charitable collections and charity shops. Clothes labels should, where possible, remind purchasers not to bin items but to pass them on for re-use or recycling.
(Paragraph 51)
13. Defra should consult manufacturers to develop standards and criteria for whole-life assessments of the environmental impacts of different kinds of textiles and use this information to promote the use of more sustainable materials in clothing.
(Paragraph 52)
Household waste incentive schemes
14. Defra must improve its support to local authorities in explaining more clearly the benefits which can arise from households reducing their domestic waste volumes. The department should now produce a report explaining how a more rational regime for charging for domestic waste collection and disposal can be proceeded with. If public commitment to recycling is to be developed, local authorities must firstly make it clear to people what the current costs of waste collection are and express such figures in terms of cost per bin, bag or wheelie bin.
(Paragraph 57)
Business waste re-use and recycling
15. Support services to help businesses increase their re-use and recycling of materials have proven themselves to be extremely cost-effective, particularly in the case of the National Industrial Symbiosis Programme (NISP). We recommend that Defra re-evaluates the impact that cuts in funding for the Waste Resources Action Programme and NISP is having on business waste re-use and recycling levels and the missed opportunities for economic growth decoupled from environmental degradation. The department should confirm that rationalisation of services under WRAP has released efficiency savings and explain how WRAP will work with local government, businesses and regional agencies to enable them to serve a wider range of organisations.
(Paragraph 62)
Local authority support for businesses
16. We recommend that Defra reviews whether the Landfill Allowance Trading Scheme is having a negative impact on council provision of waste services for businesses.
(Paragraph 65)
Construction industry waste re-use and recycling
17. We recommend that the Government should identify more specific criteria than the current project value which could be used to determine which projects require a Site Waste Management Plan. We are concerned that some smaller construction companies find it difficult to comply with Site Waste Management Plan provisions to the same extent as larger companies. Defra should work with the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills to raise small and medium sized construction companies' awareness of their legal responsibilities on waste and to encourage them to view it as a resource. We further recommend that the Environment Agency puts greater effort into enforcing construction waste requirements such as Site Waste Management Plans across the construction sector. It should publish a report by December 2010 showing what progress they have made in this respect.
(Paragraph 68)
18. Defra ought to work more closely with both the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Department for Communities and Local Government to realise the opportunities that both reclamation and salvage present. More use should be made of the knowledge and expertise of the Building Research Establishment.
(Paragraph 69)
Waste classification
19. We recommend that funding is continued for the protocols work to develop standards to define when a wide range of waste material ceases to be waste, with arrangements also being made to provide widespread publicity of its conclusions. The Environment Agency should produce a report highlighting where the biggest gains could be made if certain materials were declassified as waste.
(Paragraph 73)
Improving the re-use and recycling regulatory
framework—Environmental Permitting Programme (EPP)
20. There is some evidence that Environmental Permitting thresholds are being set in ways that deter rather than encourage re-use of materials. Since recycled metal is a valuable secondary raw material, a specific review of waste regulation for the metals industry should be undertaken to ensure that regulatory burdens are proportionate to the health and environmental impacts of this sector. Any change in the rules that might result must ensure that metals, a valuable resource, are not discarded but re-used.
(Paragraph 76)
21. The duty regime for waste fuel oils is acting as a deterrent to the re-use of such oils, increasing the likelihood of illegal dumping and providing a perverse incentive for industry to use virgin fossil fuels. The Government should impose lower levels of duty on waste fuel oils which meet quality specifications determined by the Environment Agency.
(Paragraph 79)
Composting
22. We welcome the work by Defra and the Environment Agency to develop quality protocols on compost products.
(Paragraph 81)
23. We recommend that Defra undertake an analysis of the trade-offs between the use of food waste in anaerobic digestion and composting to determine the optimal method of food waste disposal.
(Paragraph 82)
24. Although there is a significant proportion of homes that are unable to compost, home composting (including of all food waste using systems such as bokashi, green cone and jora) has considerable potential for reducing residual waste sent to landfill and for making refuse collection more hygienic and thus reducing problems of hygiene and odour associated with alternate weekly waste collections.
(Paragraph 83)
25. Local composting of food waste from institutions such as schools and hospitals and groups of restaurants (including those in Parliament) should also be encouraged using similar systems. Not only would this reduce collection costs and the negative environmental effects of transportation but the resulting compost is also a valuable resource for household and community use (for example in local food production). However, we also support separate collection of household and other food waste, particularly where home composting is not feasible. We recommend that the Government sets a target for mandatory collection of food waste, learning lessons from those authorities already operating such schemes in which food waste is put to beneficial use such as in an anaerobic digestion plant. To maximise the beneficial use of food and garden waste advice, education and practical support should be made available by local authorities. Such support should include securing discounts or providing subsidies for composting equipment, taking into account the outcome of Defra's analysis of the optimal method of food waste disposal.
(Paragraph 84)
Energy from waste technology
26. To ensure that only energy efficient methods of generating energy from waste are adopted, the Government should require planning applications for such plant to demonstrate how heat produced will be captured and used.
(Paragraph 90)
Planning barriers
27. We recommend that planning processes be streamlined by allowing an application for an Environment Agency permit to be made either in parallel with, or prior to, application for planning permission for waste infrastructure, as local circumstances dictate. Planning should also be speeded up for minor extensions to existing waste operations on current sites by applying permitted development rights in these circumstances.
(Paragraph 94)
28. We urge the Department for Communities and Local Government to set out an action plan to improve the skills within, and support available to, local authority planning departments for handling one-off or occasional waste facility applications.
(Paragraph 95)
29. We do not support extending the scope of the National Policy Statement relating to biomass and energy from waste plant to smaller facilities as this would reduce local involvement in planning decisions. The Government should produce up-to-date, clear guidance on the environmental impacts of energy from waste operations as people need to know whether incineration is "safe". This guidance should inform planning decisions on energy from waste technologies and enable debate to be focussed on site specific issues.
(Paragraph 98)
Finance barriers
30. Development of significant new waste management infrastructure is heavily reliant on the Private Finance Initiative, which has been able to secure long-term funding for large scale projects. However since the PFI approach has draw-backs, including potential inflexibility, Defra should review its future role in funding the provision of waste infrastructure to ensure that, where it is appropriate, projects include contractual arrangements which provide for flexibility to meet changing circumstances.
(Paragraph 103)
Landfill tax
31. We recommend that the Government extends the escalator for landfill tax up to at least 2020 in order to enable the waste industry to plan on a longer term basis.
(Paragraph 105)
Illegal waste exports
32. The small number of prosecutions for illegal waste exports does not give a true picture of the potentially much larger scale of illegal waste exports from this country. It concerns us that the competent authority for regulating waste exports does not currently have full access to intelligence on potential illegal waste exports. It is vital that liaison between all the relevant agencies tackling waste crime is improved and the Government should seek the first available opportunity to remove legal impediments to full information sharing between the Environment Agency and other agencies monitoring exports, including the police, HM Revenue and Customs and the UK Border Agency. In addition the Government should liaise with the Home Office and the Crown Prosecution Service to ensure that the Proceeds of Crime Act can fully bear down on the illegal profits which can be gained from this lucrative trade.
(Paragraph 112)
Illegal exports of Waste Electronic and Electrical
Equipment (WEEE)
33. There is evidence that regulations prohibiting the export of waste electronic and electrical equipment have been circumvented on a wide scale by those passing off waste equipment as functioning equipment for legitimate export. We support changes to the regulatory regime to ensure that only fully functioning electronic and electrical equipment is exported from the UK.
(Paragraph 114)
Litter and fly-tipping
34. We recommend that the Government review how councils are using statutory provisions to tackle fly-tipping and littering. It should develop incentives (both carrots and sticks) for councils to utilise fully their powers on these issues. The outcome of this work should be made available within 12 months.
(Paragraph 118)
35. Regulatory income is insufficient to fund enforcement of regulations and Defra must ensure that additional resources are made available. Private landowners who are victims of fly-tipping should also be given assistance in cleaning up their property, using revenue from the penalties imposed for waste crime. We recommend that Defra identifies and brings forward proposals to address barriers to enforcement, including lack of awareness of powers and sanctions, across Government departments.
(Paragraph 120)
36. We welcome Defra's announcement that it is establishing trials of re-usable and refillable packaging. The Government should make public the findings of the outcomes of these trials, in particular how cost-effective different methods of re-using packaging prove to be.
(Paragraph 122)
37. The Government should also evaluate the practicalities of applying a small "clean up" levy to products, including smoking materials, drinks and confectionary including chewing gum, which, together with their packaging, contribute the largest volumes of litter. Revenues could be distributed to local authorities to help clean up their neighbourhoods.
(Paragraph 123)
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