A Resource Recovery Forum conference heard yesterday that recycling targets set for local authorities in the UK are “fundamentally flawed” because they are in percentage instead of weight-based form, and because they don't take account of the differences in local authority areas.
If the UK does fail to meet the Landfill Directive targets for the diversion of municipal waste from landfill, European fines are likely to be in the order of 500,000 a day while the country is in breach.
This year saw the amount of municipal waste sent to landfill reduced for the first time, by 300,000 tonnes from 2001/02 to 2002/03. The total municipal waste landfilled in 2002/03 was 22 million tonnes, but by 2010 this needs to be cut by over five million tonnes to reach the 75% diversion target using 1995 waste levels, as demanded by the Landfill Directive.
Keith Riley, managing director of Onyx South, said: “There is a clear concern in government that the increases in recycling and diversion of waste from landfill are not sufficient to meet European targets. The UK faces the prospect of having to pay the fines. The response has been different in different places – many local authorities have done little and legislation has been needed to force their hands.”
Targets
Leading the voices of concern on the failure of local authority recycling targets was Dr David Davies, who published a report this week comparing international municipal waste diversion performances.
Dr Davies warned that council areas with a lower population density might be recycling a higher proportion of their waste, but they were generating far more waste per head of the population than urban areas. Since green waste was making up the lion's share of diversion levels for high-performing local authorities, recycling levels for councils in the UK depend largely on how many properties have gardens in the council area, he said.
Some local authority experts have said councils shouldn't even be collecting green waste, since it is not their statutory obligation to do so. Dr Davies said that instead of percentage recycling targets, local authorities should be set targets for the amount of residual waste requiring landfill.
Urban vs Rural
And, Dr Davies said urban councils were wrong to be looking to rural councils for lessons on good practice. He said: “There are still false equations being drawn. People saying 'So and so over there is doing something and we should do the same'. The consequences are dangerous and you get strategies that are fundamentally flawed.”
Dr Davies said some of the targets set in the UK, especially the London Assembly's 60% by 2015 mission, are simply “unrealistic”. Towns with fewer than 1,000 inhabitants might be achieving 50% recycling rates in Europe, he said, but the best large urban areas only stretch to 36%, and some Dutch cities, including Amsterdam, Rotterdam and the Hague, can only manage 16-17%.
Cory Environmental development director Peter Johnson said that his company had been accused of being “un-ambitious” in setting up the Western Riverside Waste Authority disposal contract in London, because their recycling target aims had not been as high as those in Hampshire.
He said: “It struck me at the time that it was somewhat preposterous to compare Wandsworth with Winchester. They're not very obvious bedfellows.”
While the average population density for Hampshire was 4.4 people per hectare, he said the figure was 94.9 in the WRWA area. And, he said residents in Hampshire produce 18% more waste than those in the west London boroughs.
HWRCs
More than a quarter of waste in Hampshire is generated via household waste recycling centres, while the figure in the western London boroughs is just 10%, Mr Johnson said. While Hampshire is recycling 22.6% of its household waste overall compared to the WRWA's 10.2% rate, if household waste recycling centres were discounted, Hampshire's rate would be 12.1% compared to WRWA's 9.5%, he said.
The difference in recycling performances in the two areas was largely down to green waste – the amount taken to household waste recycling centres for composting in Hampshire is 36 times greater per head than in WRWA boroughs.
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