Ian Goodfellow Chairman, Environmental Services Association

ENVIRONMENTAL SERVICES ASSOCIATION

The time is right, says Ian Goodfellow, Chairman of the Environmental Services Association, to move Britain into the top tier of countries for waste and resource management.

For many years, the attitude to waste in Britain was ‘out of sight, out of mind’. The UK’s geology meant that suitable landfill sites were plentiful and my industry, the waste-management industry, was largely a disposal service. As recently as 2000/01, 79 per cent of waste in England was sent to landfill.

But in the last few years a revolution has taken place. A combination of EU legislation, the growing challenge of energy security and the development of complex markets for recyclates (ie, materials collected for recycling) has seen the focus change from waste disposal to waste management and, increasingly, to resource management. ESA members recover over 10 million tonnes of material each year from the waste stream for recycling, reprocessing and energy recovery.

Today, waste policy is driven by the EU Waste Framework Directive and, in particular, the ‘waste hierarchy’. According to that hierarchy, landfill should be the last resort for dealing with waste, and preventing it arising in the first place is the ideal. Reusing, recycling or recovering energy from waste make up the middle of the hierarchy.

At all levels of this hierarchy, the waste-management industry, working with government, business and households, is making good progress. Take waste prevention, for example; for decades, waste arisings grew inexorably in line with economic growth. It is too soon to be certain, but there are some signs this link may have been broken; for example, a 21 per cent rise in GDP between 2000 and 2007 only produced a 2 per cent rise in waste.

In recycling, too, progress has been dramatic. The combined efforts of householders, local government, the environmental movement and ESA’s members, have seen municipal recycling rates rise steadily, from 12 per cent in 2001 to 39 per cent in 2009/101.

So how high can recycling rates go? We must be realistic. Some wastes — such as nappies, some furniture and construction wastes, heavily mixed or inseparable wastes, and non-recyclable plastics — are not suitable for recycling because there is no way to reprocess them back into a product. A Friends of the Earth report2 looked at what recycling levels could be in the future. In an ideal world, where “the highest theoretical capture rates achieved for all recyclable and compostable materials, and the best available recycling and composting schemes are in place and these collection systems operate at their theoretical optimum,” FoE concluded, a rate of just over 82 per cent might happen. Under a more practical, but still ambitious scenario, where “a high capture rate is achieved”, a recycling rate of 68 per cent was judged a realistic possibility. Even then, for a few materials the energy use required to transport, sort, clean, treat and reprocess this material into a new product may outweigh the environmental benefits on offer.

Given the likely persistence of, perhaps, a third of the waste stream that will be difficult to recycle, the waste hierarchy decrees ‘energy recovery’ as the next best option. Hence the waste-management industry’s increasing use of Energy from Waste (EFW) plants. EFW comprises a family of technologies (including thermal treatment and anaerobic digestion) used to recover energy from waste. The energy can be in the form of electricity or gas and, under some estimates, could deliver 6 per cent of UK energy consumption by 2020. This would be an invaluable contribution to UK energy security and would aid the achievement of our challenging EU Renewable Energy targets.

It is also important to recognise, as we enter the much heralded ‘age of austerity’, that this very significant progress has been delivered mainly through private investment. Waste management is now largely delivered by the private sector and is a highly competitive market. Waste companies will need to invest £1–2bn a year for the next decade in new waste-treatment facilities to meet the UK’s European targets.

Despite the progress made in recent years, we think we can do even better. The proportion of waste landfilled needs to come down ever further — technological innovation will enable us to improve the quality of recyclate we can produce from waste. But to do so, and to ensure that companies continue to invest and create new jobs, we need the right policy framework from government.

Our recent publication, Driving Change: Policy Proposals for a Greener Government3 sets out our priorities. The report is divided into seven key areas which we view as critical for ensuring that the government’s aspirations, industry requirements and environmental and local needs can be actioned. These key areas are: planning; financial issues; energy policy; recycling and recovery; people, health and safety; Environment Agency and regulation; and Europe policy. We are calling for the government to:

• Improve co-ordination of waste and energy policy. The incentive framework needs to be improved so that energy from waste’s potential contribution to the UK’s energy needs is maximised.

• Align responsibilities between waste disposal and collection authorities. Collection systems should be co-ordinated and harmonised with treatment infrastructure to ensure consistency of material delivered to facilities.

• Improve the co-ordination of municipal and commercial waste infrastructure. Consideration needs to be made of improving the risk profile for residual waste facilities so that economies of scale can be optimised in managing both municipal and commercial waste streams together.

• Speed up the planning process. The planning process, including for appeals, needs to be speeded up. Timing uncertainty increases complications associated with contractual and funding issues. This needs to be reduced.

• Incentivise local communities to accept new waste infrastructure. This could be achieved through directing business rates raised from facilities back to local communities. An alternative would be to bring forward the negotiation of section 106 agreements such that local residents are able to see the benefits in advance of the planning decision being debated.

• Incentivise demand for domestic use of recycled materials. Green public procurement should be used to take advantage of the government’s purchasing power. At the same time, recyclers should be able to use the greenhouse gas saving benefits from material recovery to offset their carbon footprints under instruments such as the CRC Efficiency Scheme.

• Extend producer responsibility schemes to encourage reuse as well as recycling. Greater incentives could also be built into municipal contracts to encourage contractors to increase reuse activities.

• Make policing environmental crime a priority so that, in the face of budgetary pressure, there are sufficient resources and intent to ensure that there is zero tolerance for illegal operators. Resources can be freed-up by leveraging industry self-regulation and by greater recognition for quality assurance schemes.

With ministers conducting a review of waste policies, there is a perfect opportunity to make progress on all these fronts and move Britain into the top tier of countries for waste and resource management.

The Environmental Services Association (ESA) represents the UK's waste management and secondary resources industry. Members provide essential waste and secondary resource-management services to the public and private sectors. ESA works with governments, parliaments and regulators to bring about a sustainable system of waste management for the UK.

Biography of Ian Goodfellow
Ian Goodfellow is currently Managing Director of Shanks Waste Management Ltd and is also the Chairman of the Environmental Services Association. During his time at Shanks, Ian has developed and implemented a strategy that has seen the UK business change from a landfill disposal business into a materials management business. He has over 20 years’ experience of working in the waste industry and was previously Managing Director of SITA UK.

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References
1.http://www.defra.gov.uk/evidence/statistics/environment/wastats/download/mwb200910.xls
2. http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/briefings/residual_waste.pdf
3. Download at: http://www.esauk.org/ESA-DrivingChange-web.pdf