Waste watchers in the UK (England in particular) may be forgiven for daring to hope that the policy drought endured over the past several administrations may be coming to an end.
In 2001 the Environment, Transport and Regional Affairs Select Committee commented in its Fifth Report that the UK’s waste strategy lacked ambition and imagination, and that “the most serious criticism of [Waste Strategy 2000] is that it is a misnomer: there is no strategy, or vision, rather a list of aspirations and some relatively weak levers to achieve those aims … to produce real shifts will require major new policies, not just a little tinkering with existing ones”.
This applies equally to the defunct Waste Strategy for England 2007 and to the Plan of 2013. Worthy attempts to update policy such as Enabling the Transition to a Green Economy (2011) and a Resource Security Action Plan (2012) have also foundered amidst Defra’s “stepping back” stance of 2013.
Is the Government at last “stepping up” rather than “stepping back”? The signs are hopeful. In 2014 the House of Lords Science and Technology Select Committee’s report Waste or Resources? Stimulating a Bioeconomy stated that “waste policy is often framed in environmental terms, and while we do not diminish environmental considerations … the Government is not sufficiently seized of the potential economic prize for the UK”.
It is this crucial change of mindset that appears to have seeped into the collective consciousness of our key departments, BEIS and Defra. The Clean Growth Strategy says: “we will … unlock the environmental and economic benefits associated with greater resource productivity … we want the UK to become a world leader in terms of competitiveness, resource productivity and resource efficiency: maximising the value we extract from our resources … we will work toward achieving zero avoidable waste by 2050”.
These aspirations, along with a commitment to the principles of a circular economy, are echoed in the Industrial Strategy white paper, and frame Defra’s proposed resources and waste strategy. Add Defra’s 25 Year Environment Plan, the NIC’s assessment of waste infrastructure, and the long-delayed GOS report From Waste to Resource Productivity, and we are perhaps justified in spotting an alignment of the stars.
Reverse
The challenge is to reverse years of strategic stagnation, at least in England. First, we lack credible and reliable data on waste arisings, notably of commercial/industrial waste. Other than the fact that we are net exporters of recyclates and net importers of raw materials, we have relatively little fine-grained data on specific raw and secondary material flows into and out of the UK’s economic sectors, hampering informed policy development and tracking of progress. Setting a robust foundation for capturing the right data for the right metrics should receive the highest propriety, and it is heartening that Defra appears to be taking heed.
Second, in the absence of a vision for our sector, we have been developing policy piecemeal, responding more to the exigencies of the moment (plastic bags, coffee cups, plastic bottles) rather than contextualising them in a coherent overarching strategic framework. All strategies should of course allow for flexibility and adaptability, but this is no justification for our uncoordinated policy patchwork.
This feeds into the third challenge – presently we have a jigsaw of individual initiatives that requires synchronising and stitching together. The NIC project cannot deliver a robust outcome until there is agreement on the quantum of waste arisings and until the key features of the resources and waste strategy are settled, for example in relation to the ambition for waste prevention or recycling or product reuse (which in turn depend on reliable data).
The GOS report presents a lengthy list of policy options that needs to be sifted and prioritised if we are to avoid the trap of the European Commission’s Circular Economy Package Action Plan: 50-odd unprioritised actions with hardly one delivered in its entirety so far. But one cannot prioritise in a vacuum – hence the importance of articulating at least the bones of a resources and waste strategy as a frame of reference before moving to other actions.
China
Finally, if China’s National Sword programme has taught us anything, it is that over-reliance on overseas markets can be risky, whether for RDF or for recyclate streams.
It is imperative that the new resources and waste strategy integrates with the Industrial and Clean Growth strategies to balance domestic supply-side and demand-side measures for our sector outputs. This will require government departments as well as the devolved administrations to work together to develop coherent, mutually supportive policies and to ensure that divergent strategies and policy measures are not created, distorting the internal UK market.
One voice
In terms of sectoral engagement, if the fine words in the Clean Growth and other strategies are not to fizzle out into yet another rhetorical flourish (“world leading” pretensions seems to be Michael Gove’s USP for a post-Brexit UK in other areas as well – agriculture, animal welfare – but we have heard similar from previous Ministers), our sector has a responsibility to engage proactively and constructively with policymakers. And it will, provided we speak with one voice.
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