Caution urged over potential landfill bans

The idea of banning materials such as aluminium from landfill was mooted in the Packaging Strategy, published last week (June 9) (see letsrecycle.com story), while environment secretary Hilary Benn also raised the possibility of bans being considered for glass, food and wood (see letsrecycle.com story).

In the strategy, the government said it would commission research into the environmental and economic consequences of additional landfill bans, with further research on the impacts of any proposed bans being published at the end of September 2009.

However, local authorities and waste and recycling sector trade bodies have urged the government to ensure that any material specific bans take into account the need to create alternative treatment infrastructure and are performed in a “manageable” way.

Addressing the potential for food waste to be banned, the Local Government Association raised concerns over how any new infrastructure to help divert waste from landfill would be funded and said councils need to retain “flexibility to operate” collection systems.

An LGA spokesman said: “Banning food waste going to landfill would require a huge investment so councils could operate new collections and process food waste separately. It needs to be up to local authorities to decide how they get rid of people's rubbish.”

Jeremy Jacobs, managing director of the Association for Organics Recycling (AFOR), highlighted that the possibility of landfill bans for organic waste was also being explored by the EU biowaste green paper published last year (see letsrecycle.com story) and said that he was pleased the UK government was at least considering the move.

He told letsrecycle.com: “We absolutely welcome this move but it has to be done in a manageable, step change manner so that industry can keep up with the pace – finding space for facilities is also a big issue. Eighteen million tonnes of biowaste are still going to landfill in this country at the moment.”

Aluminium

In the 83-page Packaging Strategy, aluminum is the only material directly mentioned as being considered for a ban, a move which Alupro – the aluminium recycling trade body – has welcomed as a “positive thing”.

“The principle makes a lot of sense”, said Rick Hindley, executive director at Alupro. “But you have to put in the infrastructure to make sure all aluminium is extracted.”

British Glass – the glass container industry trade association – said that the proposed move to ban glass was an “interesting one” that came “out of the blue” and would be dependent on the quality of material being diverted.

David Workman, director general at British Glass, said: “It is feasible, if the government is determined then I am for this, as it can only improve collection systems and improve quality of cullet coming out of the waste stream.

“Quality is key to it and we are very pleased that the quality issues were pushed in the strategy and the collection trend work done by WRAP and we have lobbied very hard for for a very long time,” he added.

Response

Responding to Packaging Strategy as a whole, trade bodies appear divided on the focus of the strategy but on the whole welcomed the publication of the 10-year strategy.

The British Retail Consortium claimed talk of making enforcement action easier against retailers using too much packaging was “distracting” and that excessive packaging was “not the issue” but that local authorities need to be able to expand the range of materials that they collect.

The Confederation of Paper Industries – which represents the paper recycling sector – welcomed the report's emphasis on “optimising packaging” and the call for local authorities to treat recycling “as a source of revenue” but expressed concern that corrugated packaging was “largely conspicuous in its absence in the report”, despite the material operating a closed loop recycling system already.

And, also welcoming the strategy, Julian Hunt, director of communications at the Food and Drink Federation (FDF), said: “We agree that it's important for the government's packaging strategy to focus on waste prevention.”

The FDF said that its members have signed a “bold ambition” to send zero food and packaging waste from factories to landfill by 2015 and it was said to be working closely with WRAP, among other organisations, to reduce the amount of packaging reaching households.