Despite the 400 page report raising concerns about bioaerosols found around composting sites, the Composting Association was full of praise. The report, while providing a much-needed information base for future decision-making, also highlighted the role that composting has to play in waste recovery, it said.
The Review of Environmental and Health Effects of Waste Management: Municipal Solid Waste and Similar Wastes is available on the DEFRA website.
Association chief executive Dr Jane Gilbert said the study echoed research carried out by the association and the HSE, which concluded composting facilities do not “pose any unique endangerment to the health and welfare of the general public”.
Dr Gilbert said the report showed that there is no published evidence that emissions from composting facilities detrimentally affect the health of on-site workers or nearby residents. Although environment minister Elliot Morley, when pushed on the subject, said: “Don’t put your head in it!”, the Composting Association said composting had been vindicated.
Emissions from the composting process already exist in the environment, so it is essential that every composting facility undergo a risk assessment to ensure it meets Environment Agency policy, it added.
“Composting will have a significant role to play in the future management of organic resources in the UK,” Dr Gilbert said. “It would be most unfortunate, therefore, if this report were to divert attention away from the positive benefits of composting and used as a means of delaying the introduction of a sustainable waste strategy which the UK needs so badly.”
Credibility
The Environmental Services Association (ESA) was also pleased with the report, which it said did much to sweep aside the “disinformation” spread around about waste management. The Royal Society peer review added extra credibility to the study, ESA chief executive Dirk Hazell said.
The ESA also pointed to the broad success of modern environmental regulation in delivering safe waste management infrastructure. “We now need to build on this achievement by investing in infrastructure that will also achieve greater alignment of economic and environmental sustainability,” Mr Hazell said.
“The government now has an opportunity to work to build a coalition of waste producers, the waste management industry, local authorities, non-governmental organisations and the regulator to enable the UK both to reduce the growth of waste arisings and also restore much more of the value in waste to the productive economy, safely achieving compliance with EU law,” the ESA chief executive said.
Efficiency
“We can be proud of the levels of waste safety and efficiency reached in this country,” was the message from the Chartered Institute of Waste Management. But, it did point out there was no totally risk-free method for managing waste.
While admitting it brought nothing new to the table, the report was welcomed by the Institute's chief executive, Steve Lee, as a much-needed tool in the debate about waste.
“Making waste safe is no longer enough,” he explained. “We must recycle more valuable materials and recover more energy before we dispose of it.”
Missed opportunity
The green lobby did not give the report such a warm welcome. Branding it a missed opportunity, the Green Alliance’s head of strategy Ben Shaw complained that the report did not contain the clear statement on the government’s waste management policy that environmentalists were hoping for.
“The government is missing the point,” he complained. “The review has taken a year and a half. But we are no closer to getting the coherent set of economic drivers needed from government to drive change.”
The Alliance called for a waste disposal tax for landfill and incineration, and said councils should be able to charge householders relating to the amount of waste they produce. The comprehensive spending review expected in July should also ringfence more cash for waste management, Mr Shaw said.
“We also need imaginative product policies that will cut off waste at source,” he added. “Otherwise we will continue to bury and burn valuable resources.”
Miserable
Friends of the Earth (FoE) was similarly scathing. Waste campaigner Anna Watson slammed the study for doing little to increase confidence in the government’s waste strategy. It also failed to realise the benefits of recycling or the global impact of the way the UK manages its waste, the pressure group said.
FoE was worried that some might see the report's findings as a “green light for incineration”.
“The UK has a miserable record on reducing waste and will almost certainly fail to meet the government’s targets of recycling a quarter of our domestic waste by 2005,” Ms Watson argued. “Ministers must do more to boost recycling.”
She joined with the Green Alliance in demanding that Chancellor Gordon Brown introduce an incineration tax to dissuade councils from burning resources that could be recycled.
The report should have looked at ways to avoid the use of natural resources in the first place, the beneficial affects of recycling on the climate and the global environmental impact of the UK’s reliance on landfill and incineration, FoE said.
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