Yesterday, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) announced that it had narrowly missed its Waste Strategy target to recycle 40% of waste by 2010, reaching a 39.7% recycling and composting rate for 2009/10 (see letsrecycle.com story).
In a statement, CIWM said: “This should not be seen as a ‘failure'. There has been remarkable turnaround across the decade and recycling and composting targets have improved by five times, from less than 10% to 40%.”
A spokesperson for the LGA added: “It is good news for councils and council taxpayers that households in Britain are reducing the amount of rubbish they throw away, sending less waste to landfill and recycling more than ever.”
However, despite the praise, many warned that England's recycling performance could slip if the government did not put the right incentives and targets in place – claiming that moves by Wales this week to agree a statutory recycling target of 70% by 2024/25 (see letsrecycle.com story) should be considered in England.
Joy Blizzard, chair of LARAC, said: “It is good news that we have practically met the target. It will be interesting now to see if England follows Wales in terms of setting statutory recycling targets”.
Julian Parfitt, research and technical director at consultancy Resource Futures, added that he was concerned that the government was only interested in doing the bare minimum when it came to waste.
He said: “The result is good but it is a shame that there seems to be a ‘just in time' approach to meeting targets. With Wales introducing a statutory 70% recycling target it will be interesting to know that having reached 40% which pushes us broadly into the middle in Europe what we can expect in future – especially if the government wants to create more green jobs.”
‘Worrying'
Julian Kirby, waste campaigner at Friends of the Earth, went further to suggest that current government policy could actually see recycling rates fall.
He said: “We welcome that recycling has risen but, in the words of Caroline Spelman, it needs to go much further and faster and there are worrying signs coming from the coalition government that it is not happening.
“The coalition government risks stalling progress if it persists in the current vein of not banning material from landfill and returning to weekly collections and so on. The ideological drive to set councils back to weekly collections rather than alternate weekly collections which are cheaper and boost recycling could knock recycling back by several points as well as costing councils a lot of money at a time of economic squeeze.”
Pointing to the fact that the rate of increase in recycling was falling, CIWM said that making progress with regards to recycling would get tougher, especially after last month's Comprehensive Spending Review which is said would “bite deep into local authority spending over the next four years; both in terms of front-end services and the new infrastructure we need to put 'waste back to work'”.
Looking forward, the LGA stressed that it was important for councils to keep up momentum in order to ensure that European landfill diversion targets were met.
A spokesman said: “Despite meeting the 2010 EU landfill directive target, we face further targets in 2013 and stringent fines if they are not met. Therefore, there is no room for complacency and councils will continue to work with local people to help them keep up their good work.”
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