Speaking at the South East England Regional Waste Summit yesterday, the council's director of strategic planning, Peter Raine, said that with the current system of waste funding, authorities like Kent will not meet Landfill Directive diversion targets beyond 2010.
”Waste funding is way out of kilter with what the government is offering.“
– Peter Raine, Kent CC
Mr Raine said: “For the first time, the county council is about to spend more on waste than it is on road maintenance, which is incredible. Waste funding is way out of kilter with what the government is offering.
“From 2012, we are going to miss the Landfill Directive targets, like most authorities in this country.”
The bleak picture was painted by Mr Raine despite the county achieving household recycling rates of about 24% in 2003/04.
Mr Raine said the only answer was to get residents to pay for their waste as they would electricity or water.
Recovery
The other key to meeting Landfill Directive targets will be for the UK to take energy-from-waste more seriously, he said.
“Most of the countries abroad that are leading on recycling are also leading on incineration. The waste hierarchy should say of course re-use, recycle what is sensible but recover the rest, to minimise landfill,” he explained.
Kent is three years away from a new energy-from-waste facility at Allington, and Mr Raine said that by 2008, the county hopes to be landfilling only a third of its waste, with recycling and energy recovery equally important in tackling the rest.
Waste reduction measures including a re-usable nappy scheme with the county's hospitals and a home composting campaign would also be important, he said. But he called on the government to count aggregates recycling and home composting towards local authority targets.
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