The rise could be down to councils shifting their focus from recycling targets to landfill diversion requirements, says Be Environmental, the consultancy which has delivered the findings in a report for Defra.
Be Environmental says the rise could also be because authorities want to know what their waste is made up of, because of a need to ensure maximum efficiency of chosen future technologies.
This waste composition finding is a feature of the Impact Assessment of WIP Local Authority Support Unit Direct Consultancy Support (DCS) and Regional Support Fund (RSF) report. Both of these organisation exist to help remove barriers to recycling and efficient waste management.
Figures show that a total of 10 waste composition projects were undertaken in 2004/05, but this increased to a total of 40 projects in 2005/06.
Some waste composition projects consisted of more than one analysis, taking into consideration seasonality, or different material sources. The total number of composition analyses which were carried out as a result of the funding support was 157.
The report states: “One of the reasons for this increase could be the shift of priority from the immediate challenge of meeting recycling targets, to the more strategic and longer term imperative of delivering on the Landfill Diversion requirements of the Landfill Directive.
“The latter requiring good data to project forward into the medium to long term (usually to 2020). In addition, many local authorities are interested in the composition of residual waste to ensure the maximum efficiency of a chosen future technology,” it continues.
Be Enviromental noted: “This is a significant amount of raw data which is now available for all local authorities to access.”
The other main area of requested support was for local waste strategies. This rose from 14 in 2004/05 to 35 in 2005/06. And bulky goods service help grew from eight to 18.
A small dip was seen in requirements for support for the identification of waste and recycling sites over the same period.
Kerbside
With regard to collection activities, modeling of kerbside options was more prevalent in 2004/5 which decreased from seven projects to just one in 2005/06.
The report identified that there was a fairly even spread of support given to all nine English regions, although the North West and London accounted for most, proportionally.
Overall it stated that the RSF and DCS will help authorities make a saving of 450 million projected to 2020 and will help divert 285 million tones of waste from landfill.
The report ended: “It can be concluded that the DCS and RSF projects have substantially contributed to the development of the strategies to take municipal waste management forward in order to meet current and anticipated national and local policy objectives and obligations.”
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