Examination of Witnesses (Questions 815-819)
Joan Ruddock MP, Ian Pearson MP and Malcolm Wicks
MP
13 MAY 2008
Q815 Chairman: Good morning, Ministers, we are
very pleased to have you here. I have to say that the last time
I had three Ministers before me and I was chairing a Select Committee,
the fire alarm went off, and we knew it was an exercise, and the
room emptied, but we kept the Ministers hostage and we just kept
on going. We do not anticipate fire alarms this morning, although
I think it might be warm enough to suggest there is a fire somewhere!
We are trying to get something done about the air-conditioning
but, as you know, this building does not really lend itself to
these technologies, so we will have a rather hot time. Maybe I
could start this morning on the subject of the Waste Strategy
and data collection. The Waste Strategy for England outlines strategies
for the whole waste hierarchy, including prevention, recyling
and disposal. Which department is responsible for taking the lead
on waste reduction and what criteria have been used to assess
progress?
Joan Ruddock: Thank you, Chairman. I will just begin,
if I may, because Defra does have the lead on this topic, although
obviously other departments contribute, and my colleagues here
will be chipping in as and when appropriate. The Waste Strategy
that we rely on was published in 2007, about a year ago. It is
overseen by a management board which is made up of Defra in the
lead, representatives from Treasury, CLG, BERR and the Cabinet
Office, as well as key stakeholders. In setting that Waste Strategy,
as you have indicated, there is a hierarchy of waste treatments
and we very much want that to begin with a reduction in waste.
What are the criteria? Well, we looked at the position we had
in the year 2000 and we found that there were 22.2 million tonnes
of waste arising in the household sector, and obviously historically
there has been link to economic growth, so an aim has to be to
decouple waste arisings from economic growth. The prediction that
we made was that we could go on a trajectory that would take us
to 2020, where we have moved from 22.2 million tonnes to 12.2
million tonnes, and that is the course on which we have set ourselves,
and I am glad to say we are making progress in that way, and if
members would like, I can go on to describe how we make progress
and measure it by milestones and by indicators, if I may just
give you that as an opening response.
Q816 Chairman: Yes, that would be
fine, if you want to carry on.
Joan Ruddock: We set out at the end of the Waste
Strategy on reduction that there would be 90 delivery milestones
and that would guide us in terms of the progress that we were
making. To give you some examples, we set ourselves a deadline
to consult on the review of regulation of inert waste—obviously
an important part of the waste stream—and we met that milestone
at the end of 2007. We also committed ourselves to developing
site waste management plans for the construction industry, which
is a huge producer of waste, and we were able to produce the new
regulations in April this year. Those are milestones that we have
met and of course the primary indicator, as I have already said,
is that of taking household waste, measuring that, and then seeing
the extent to which we could year-on-year move down to a much
lower quantity of waste arisings. That is the household sector
and I am sure members may be concerned about the commercial and
industrial sector, as indeed am I, but in terms of the answer
to the question you posed, those are the criteria and that is
the way in which we are measuring and those are our targets.
Q817 Lord Lewis of Newnham: Minister,
we are told that the National Household Waste Analysis Programme
has ceased and there is no similar scheme, as far as we can make
out, that is in place to monitor commercial and industrial waste.
How is the Government collecting the necessary data to which you
have just referred, on material flows and waste streams in order
to support the policy that you have just been enunciating?
Joan Ruddock: As I have indicated, our concentration
has been on household waste and household waste arisings. Primarily
of course we have been driven by the European Directive on landfill,
and the need to divert waste from landfill, so there has been
a big emphasis on this and I have to say that one of the questions
that I asked on joining the Department was how are we working
on the commercial and industrial sectors? As you rightly say,
the National Household Waste Analysis Programme has ceased but
we have other sources in place to gain the waste data on that.
The main source is called the Waste Data Flow which is co-ordinated
by Defra itself, and as a result of that we have good municipal
waste data. We have also got the Environment Agency collecting
data from all the waste facilities that are subject to permits,
so there is very considerable volume of data that the waste permitting
system provides to us through the Environment Agency. However,
having said that, I am aware that we have got gaps and what we
have done is rather than at this time to try to plug all those
gaps we have taken priority waste streams—and for example
you may have seen just last week a great deal of publicity about
food waste and we have made food waste one of the priority streams—and
by concentrating on specific streams it will be possible to gain
much more data and then to work on the reduction of waste within
that particular waste stream. I do want us to be able to plug
the gaps that we have and so work is being done on that at the
moment, and it will be a matter of finding out where the gaps
are, and plugging those gaps, which we have a programme to do.
Whether we should return to some comprehensive data-gathering
system is questionable because there is an immense cost in this.
When it was done by the Environment Agency in 2002, I think the
cost was about £3 million, so there have to be considerations
as to how we best should fill the particular gaps in our knowledge
on data.
Chairman: We have several people wanting to
come in; Lord Crickhowell?
Q818 Lord Crickhowell: We will come
on to the technical issues later but as you have started on domestic
waste, I think my experience must be shared by many that even
if you exclude all the material that comes to us as Members of
Parliament, the great bulk of waste—and it is a huge bulk
of material that I have to dispose—is unwanted paper. There
is a huge amount of advertising material, marketing material,
very often duplicate, triplicate. Every time you do a mail order
you then get ten catalogues from other organisations even if you
try and exclude that kind of marketing, and mostly nowadays wrapped,
including Hansard, in transparent films which if you are going
to separate your paper you have to take out and put in a separate
container. Among the priority waste streams, have you got any
effective measures underway to try and reduce this huge volume
of paper. If you look at the rubbish outside my house, food waste
is pretty small, the bottles and the tin cans are all separated
and then there is a vast quantity of unwanted paper. What do we
do about it?
Joan Ruddock: We are trying to do a number of
things and we have been working with the industry through voluntary
agreements over a period of years. What we want to do obviously
is, first of all, to reduce the amount of paper that is being
sent to people who do not want it. First of all, in consultation
with the direct mail industry, we have got a voluntary agreement
and also they have set up the mail preference service which is
a service whereby you can subscribe and give your name and address,
you tell them that you do not want to receive unsolicited mail,
and those bodies that actually belong to the organisation and
produce mail that may be unsolicited will then cease to send it
to you. I have done that but I agree with you although it did
enormously reduce the volume that I receive, I still receive some.
We are talking to the direct mail industry about trying to better
target the way in which direct mail is sent because it is reasonable
that some direct mail is sent. People will find that for example
they might receive a catalogue that enables them to shop as a
consequence and perhaps reduce some of the carbon impacts of travel
if they were to receive mail order goods so there is value there
and it is a legitimate industry. We want to target it very much
better and we have lots of discussions with them. They are making
efforts to do that but one of the biggest areas of concern is
where the mail is unaddressed, so for example if you use the mail
preference service and you stop them sending most of the stuff
that is addressed to you personally, how can you stop all the
material that is not addressed to you personally. We are discussing
with them about coming to a new agreement on establishing a way
in which addresses could be flagged as addresses that do not wish
to receive unaddressed mail. This would be a considerable move
forward and we are in discussions with the industry about this
because we believe as you do, that there is a need to reduce.
I could say something about the recycling of it which is quite
impressive and we are making a lot of progress there, but in terms
of reduction I think that is the answer to your question.
Q819 Chairman: I think Mr Wicks wanted
to come in as well.
Malcolm Wicks: Chairman, I wanted to go back
to the issue of commercial and industrial waste and say that we
in our department, the Department of Business, recognise that
there is a gap in the statistics and a shortage of reliable data,
and we are therefore working very closely with Defra's waste statistics
team (and it does not mean they are wasteful statistics but it
is team that is collecting the statistics on waste!) to look at
ways of improving the situation. There is a Defra-led study in
hand to examine what new data is really needed to support our
policy objectives. We have commissioned a couple of recent studies
in this area, one to look at the reliability of current estimates
of commercial and industrial waste going into landfill and we
also want to rank existing measures to control such waste, for
example landfill tax and recycling targets, in terms of their
carbon reduction potential so it will help us in the future judge
which measures are most important in controlling the waste. I
just want to assure the Committee that we recognise there is an
issue and we are working with our colleagues in Defra to put it
right. Just to emphasise the importance of this, it is estimated
that apparently there is twice as much commercial and industrial
waste produced as household waste so it is an important issue
in terms of data to get this one right. I want to assure the Committee
we are working hard to fill those gaps.
|
