Shadow Environment Secretary Nick Herbert has lambasted the Government's record on waste as he delivered his plans for a cleaner and greener Britain.
The shadow cabinet minister said the Conservatives would introduce a new approach that incentivises the public to engage with the idea of minimising waste and, if elected to power, would regard waste not as a problem but as a potential resource.
In his speech at the think-tank Policy Exchange, the MP said his party's waste strategy would be geared “towards the goal of a zero-waste society”.
“For too long the UK has lagged behind our EU partners in the way we have addressed waste," he said. "We have regarded waste as a problem that is best dealt with by dumping it in holes in the ground and then forgetting about it.
“This addiction to landfill has not only been immensely damaging for the environment; it has also meant that we have wasted valuable resources by burying them under a mountain of rotting rubbish. We have failed to capitalise on the opportunity to reuse, recycle or generate energy from waste and to create new jobs and investment on the back of modern waste disposal methods.
“And for a country that aspires to lead the world in seeking action on climate change, it is inexcusable that Britain appears to have been exporting toxic waste to Brazil.
“The current policy of the Government is neither desirable nor sustainable. Today I am going to set out a new approach – one that sees waste not as a problem but as a potential resource for materials and energy, and that has the bold ambition of turning Britain into a zero-waste society.”
Herbert said scrutiny of the current Government's record would reveal “a wasted opportunity”, saying it had shown “precious little leadership”.
The shadow minister said the UK landfills the majority of the 335 million tonnes of waste it produces a year at a cost of about £10 billion. The Environment Agency has estimated that British industry is putting eight percent of its gross profit into the ground.
While the amount of municipal waste that is recycled or composted in England has increased from 12 percent at the turn of the millennium to 34 percent today, this is still far below other EU nations.
Germany and Austria recycle or compost over 50 percent of their waste. Most lamentably of all, the UK’s reliance on landfill is so great that the rate even exceeds the average for the EU27.
In his speech to the Policy Exchange meeting, Herbert also targeted London's record over the past 10 years.
“In 2007/8, London only recycled or composted 22 per cent of its municipal waste, compared with 37 per cent in the South East as a whole,” he stated. “London will also export over 25 million tonnes of waste by 2025 to its surrounding counties – including over 2.5 million tonnes to my own county of West Sussex – adding to their own waste disposal burden.
“It is simply unacceptable that London exports so much waste to landfill. So I applaud Boris Johnson’s programme to turn around London’s lacklustre recycling record and help the capital go green.
“If only the Government would show the same leadership. According to the most recent Sustainable Development Commission report, only 34 percent of all of Defra’s own departmental waste is currently recycled or composted, which is over a fifth lower than the household recycling and composting rate for the highest performing council in England.
“If the department charged with driving waste reduction has such a poor record, it is little wonder that the Government has failed to deliver.”
Herbert described how both the National Audit Office (NAO) and the Public Accounts Committee have criticised Defra for its slow response to the emergence of the Landfill Directive in 1999.
In October 2007, the Public Accounts Committee reported that “Departmental officials would have known about the proposed Directive a long time before 1999, but no effective action was taken before 2003”.
Earlier this year, the National Audit Office stated that prior to 2003, “the Department’s strategies lacked practical plans for reducing reliance on landfill” and that consequently the market for waste infrastructure projects was slow to develop. The NAO also found that only two of the new infrastructure projects that have been developed over the last 10 years have finished building all of the assets that they had planned for.
Herbert added: “Defra’s failure to lead means that we are now in danger of missing the 2013 Landfill Directive target – to reduce the amount of landfilled biodegradable municipal waste to 50 percent of 1995 levels – which would mean a fine from Brussels totalling hundreds of millions of pounds, and higher council tax rates for taxpayers.
“This failure has also resulted in the UK missing out on the chance to capitalise on the development of new waste technologies. Where other European countries have become world leaders in green waste technology, Britain has been left behind.
“And in now seeking to catch up, we are using the technology pioneered in other countries. The new closed-loop bottle recycling facility in Dagenham is impressive, but the equipment is Austrian, not British.
“In the same way that Labour has missed the opportunities over the last decade to push ahead with investment in renewable energy technology, we have also missed out on the jobs and markets that could have come from a more ambitious commitment to modern waste disposal methods.
“The Government has not only dithered and delayed on developing a new approach to waste, but the action that it has taken has been fundamentally misguided. Instead of rewarding people for doing the right thing, Labour’s approach has been to punish them, as their proposed bin taxes demonstrated.
“Of course, we should be seeking to increase recycling rates and to ensure that as much waste is diverted from landfill as possible, but when households are already over-taxed, and council tax in particular has – as a former Labour Housing Minister tacitly conceded – reached the limit of acceptability, additional charges are bound to backfire.”
Should the Conservatives take power in next year's General Election, Herbert said the party would drop the stick to adopt a carrot approach, saying he wanted “to offer people incentives rather than the prospect of punitive charges or fines”.
He added: “We want to make it easier for families to go green.
“Our ambition should be to realise the potential value of our resources rather than thinking in terms of how they can be disposed of in the cheapest way possible. And this will require both a change in mindset from current practices and a new lead from Government.
“Now that the revised Waste Framework Directive has formally incorporated the five-stage waste hierarchy, ranging from prevention to disposal, we need a strategy that reflects this and drives waste as far up the hierarchy as possible. The Local Government Association recently conducted a study that found that local authorities could save over £600 million if they were to reduce the amount of waste sent to landfill to a similar level in Germany.
“There are clear economic, as well as environmental, benefits to reducing the amount of rotting rubbish that we send to landfill.”
Herbert said the environmental case against landfill is striking, describing how the path of least resistance has been chosen.
“We have taken it as the easy option for too long,” he explained. “But no one should underestimate just how damaging landfill is.
“Due to the production of methane – a gas 20 times more damaging than carbon dioxide – landfilling rubbish, especially in the way we currently do it, with plenty of food and other biodegradable waste thrown in, is without question the most environmentally damaging waste disposal method.
“And even if we were not convinced of the alternatives, we would need them anyway. Landfill capacity in England is running out – in all but two English regions, landfill capacity will run out in less than seven years’ time, and in London itself by the end of 2010. If we remain addicted to landfill, we will need to open new sites – hardly a palatable prospect.
“The continuing use of landfill should not be an option. But this cannot just be hoped for – we need alternatives that deliver, and we need to begin by reducing demand for waste disposal in the first place.”
Herbert said the key to his approach was to reduce and reuse waste.
“Waste minimisation, or reducing the amount of waste produced by a person, a business or society, is a simple and logical idea,” he explained. “The fewer materials are used, the less waste is produced.
“But if the concept is straightforward, its execution has been more problematic. Businesses and consumers ought to see the savings from minimising waste. But frequently they do not. Food waste costs the average household £420 a year. Yet it continues.
“For businesses, waste minimisation may require investment. It is likely to be easier for larger companies to pursue a strategy of resource optimisation than smaller ones. And there may be strong competitive disincentives to action like reducing the size of packaging.
“I do not believe that a regulatory approach will succeed in addressing these obstacles. We will not regulate waste out of existence. Instead, voluntary agreements should play a greater role. They have many advantages over legislation, including faster implementation and increased flexibility to changes; better design, since they are usually drawn up by individuals with a detailed understanding of the relevant sector; and, most importantly, they engage, rather than impose upon, market leaders.
“There are already both UK and European examples of voluntary agreements that focus on waste. In Europe, voluntary agreements are in place in the Netherlands, Germany and Austria for materials such as paper and tyres. In the UK, the majority of major retailers signed up to the Courtauld Commitment on packaging waste reduction in 2005.
“The Ashdown Agreement in the building sector seeks not only to cut plasterboard waste sent to landfill, but also to increase the recycling of this waste to be used again in the manufacture of new board.
“The success of the Courtauld Commitment can be seen in the fact that after being in operation for three years, it produced zero growth in packaging, despite an increase in sale volumes – an encouraging result. But it is important that its successor agreement is more ambitious by focusing higher up the packaging supply chain rather than just its end.”
Herbert said Archie Norman, a former shadow Environment Secretary and former chief executive of ASDA, will later this year deliver a report on how an ambitious new responsibility deal on waste could be developed.
And he said a Conservative government would focus on increasing recycling rates from current levels.
“Recycling saves energy, reduces the amount of raw materials that have to be extracted and helps to cut CO2 emissions,” he added. “The Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) has calculated that current levels of recycling save more than 18 million tonnes of CO2 a year, equivalent to taking five million cars off the road or closing down three coal-fired power stations.
“Recycling is a popular activity, more and more people are doing it, and as a concept it has always had an instinctive appeal to many. For this reason, for decades there has been a significant minority committed to recycling in some form and many who now do it almost religiously.
“The task is to persuade others to change their behaviour, because our recycling rates are still too low. We should at least be matching the performance of our peer group countries in the EU. But we are not going to reach household recycling and composting rates of 50 percent by 2020 – as set out in Defra’s 2007 Waste strategy – by bullying the public.
“We have to take people with us, making it easier and more attractive to do the right thing.”
Herbert said he was in favour of the Recyclebank scheme that has proved effective in America by paying the public to recycle and has the added advantage of not affecting public expenditure.
He continued: “This initiative increased residential recycling rates by 90 percent in Northern Virginia. The Recyclebank scheme is now being trialled by Windsor and Maidenhead Council, working with Veolia, where people will receive rewards such as M&S vouchers for recycling.
“Similarly, bottle deposit schemes also fit with our philosophy of using incentives rather than penalties. New York State has had a bottle bank scheme in place since 1983, paying people to recycle their plastic or glass bottles.
“Since its introduction this has reduced container litter by 70-80 percent and recycled 90 billion items.”
Herbert also highlighted a number of companies, including Tesco and the Royal Mail, that have introduced schemes that pay people for their old mobile phones.
“Innovative ideas like these show the importance both of incentivising people to recycle and also making it easier,” he said. “This principle should make us sceptical of the idea that Government should mandate kerbside sort as the sole method of collection by local authorities. Clearly it is important that we seek to get the highest value possible from the recyclables that are collected, but advances in technology should mean that this can still be achieved with co-mingled collection. Co-mingling also has the obvious benefit of not overburdening the public with an array of boxes and bins.
“Kerbside sort is also highly problematic to implement in areas with a large number of flats, due to the shortage of space for the different numbers of receptacles, but works better in suburban and rural areas where there are not such constraints on space. There is currently a role for both co-mingling and kerbside sort, but it should be for local councils to decide what collection system works best for them.”
And in his comprehensive speech, Herbert said more should be done to convert energy from waste.
“Finally, after seeking to prevent, reuse and recycle as much waste as possible, we must do more to try to capture the potential of energy from waste,” he explained. “Again the story is one of the UK being slow to recognise the potential benefits of energy from waste while other EU nations forge ahead. In 2000, nine percent of England’s municipal waste went through energy recovery processes, but after nearly a decade this has only risen to 11 percent.
“Under the EU Renewables Directive the UK will need to generate 15 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020, yet currently we only generate around five percent. As the Policy Exchange report argues, given the potential energy challenges in the years ahead, any means which could help towards meeting the nation’s security of supply, decarbonising the economy and shielding the UK from the impact of downturns in global energy markets is to be welcomed.
“National Grid has predicted that biogas production has the potential to be a large source of fuel for the UK and could meet almost 50 percent of residential demand. The Institute of Mechanical Engineers has also suggested that energy from waste could produce at least 10 percent of UK electricity by 2020 and even up to 17 percent.
“Our Low Carbon Economy paper earlier this year recognised the great potential of anaerobic digestion. It set out a proposal to enable biogas produced from farm and food wastes to replace up to half of residential gas heating by changing the regulatory regime for the gas grid and introducing ‘feed-in tariffs’.
“This new biogas will also be used to supply heat to community heating schemes which, by lowering energy lost in power generation, will greatly cut costs for residents that take part. But again we are behind our European partners.
“While Germany already has over 2,500 anaerobic digestion plants, as Policy Exchange shows, there were only 23 in the UK generating electricity as of May 2008.
“Where there is community consent, there is also a place for energy recovery plants for non-recyclable material. But these plants must provide efficient energy recovery meeting at least the EU’s proposed energy efficiency thresholds and must meet appropriate emissions standards on the basis of transparent emissions reporting.”
Herbert described how his vision for waste would be underpinned by a six-point framework that would deliver:
* The right fiscal support
* A proper assessment of the environmental impact of waste
* A focus on commercial and industrial waste
* Co-ordinated local action
* Incentivising the right behaviour
* A higher ambition
He concluded: “Around the world, we can see that it is possible to have a higher ambition to deal with waste.
“Kamikastsu in Japan has a Zero Waste Declaration, meaning no waste to landfill by 2020. They have already achieved household recycling rates of 75-80 percent. New Zealand has a zero waste by 2020 goal, with a strong preference for voluntary instruments to achieve it. San Francisco aims to have 75 percent of waste diverted from landfill by next year and zero waste to landfill by 2020. It has a recycling rate of 67 percent of all wastes, including industrial and commercial.
“By comparison, the UK currently recycles only a third of our municipal waste and our target – reflected in Defra’s Waste Strategy 2007 – is for 75 percent recovery (including recycling and energy from waste) of municipal waste by 2020.
“Even if the current Government strategy could succeed in delivering this target, we would still be landfilling a quarter of our waste in 10 years’ time. That is not a zero-waste policy. It is a zero-ambition policy.
“We need a higher aspiration – to eliminate landfill altogether, except perhaps for inert, non-recyclable waste. But only if we join together will that be achieved. So we will consult with businesses, the waste industry, local authorities and interested groups about when the goal of zero waste to landfill can realistically be met.
“From Disraeli’s third Public Health Act of the 19th century, which required councils to provide clean drinking water and sanitation, to the Clean Air Act of the 1950s, which cleared up our cities’ smogs, Conservatives have a proud record in pioneering measures to improve the quality of the local environment.
“Now a similarly enlightened and determined approach is needed to deal with a contemporary environmental challenge, the waste produced by an affluent society. And that will be an important component of our response to global warming.
“It is time for a new approach that incentivises the public to do the right thing, regards waste not as a problem but as a potential resource, and drives forward towards the goal of a zero-waste society.”
simon david, baconsfield around 2 years, 4 months ago