Companies call for greater investment in waste

The call comes from the Environmental Services Association in its annual report published this week. In the report, covering the 2006-07 year in waste management, the ESA explained that despite rises in the amount of material being successfully recycled the amount of money being put into recycling and waste schemes was a cause for concern.

Per-Anders Hjort, the past chairman of the ESA, said: “Recycling has quadrupled in the last ten years, but this has not been accompanied by similar increases in spending and investment. Expenditure on waste is still less than 2% of council spending.”

And, he added: “Local authorities need funds for the next generation of waste management infrastructure and also revenue support for waste services.”

Relationship

In the report, Dirk Hazell, chief executive of the ESA, urged councils to be aware of operators' needs and attempt to facilitate mutually beneficial working relationships.

He said: “Operators continue to be frustrated by the difficulty in obtaining planning permission for facilities, particularly when these facilities are rejected by the same local authorities that need them to meet their statutory targets.”

Praise

However, support was given for the government's role in the sector and the report noted the importance of government policy in the waste management industry, with Mr Hjort hoping that the Waste Strategy for England would be the government's way of “grasping the nettle” and enable important changes to be made to the UK's recycling.

Mr Hazell said: “[Over the last year] our former Secretary of State the Rt. Hon David Miliband MP and environment minister Ben Bradshaw MP showed willingness to make decisions with lasting impact: the revised Waste Strategy for England and the associated rise in landfill tax evidence the importance of governmental policy drivers in shaping the market in waste management services.”

Health and Safety

The report also suggested that further work could be done to help firms with health and safety, as operators are being faced with more collection trucks entering the transport system and greater volumes of material being treated at “increasingly complex facilities”.

Even with these concerns, the organisation claimed it had achieved particularly good results in health and safety for the past year, as incidents fell by 20% for the third year running. Initiatives such as ‘Streetsafe Sam' were praised as being part of successfully getting health and safety messages across to operators.

The report stated that the interactive training CD, which highlights the potential hazards during a typical work day, had proven “extremely popular” and feedback from operators indicated that the CD was being widely used both as an induction tool for new staff and as a refresher for existing staff.

The annual account included information on regulation, health and safety, carbon management, training and work development and environmental performance.