I would suggest that 09/10 would not be a good year to be basing future strategies on
David Savory, Biffa
Speaking at an Associate Parliamentary Sustainable Resource Group meeting in London yesterday (December 9), David Savory explained that a reliance on data from seven years ago was “disappointing” and backed government plans to update figures for the commercial and industrial sector.
However, Mr Savory said he was mindful that using 2009/10 as a new benchmark for measuring waste arisings in from this particular waste stream could give a distorted picture due to the effect of the global economic slowdown on the waste sector.
He said: “Waste arisings, as far as a waste company goes, we are seeing them down 20-30%. Not because people are doing waste minimisation or recycling but simply because the industry is in recession, manufacturing is in recession, retailers are in recession.
“I would suggest that '09/'10 would not be a good year to be basing future strategies on. We are in different times and we are in a very different environment.”
Mr Savory said that accurate data collection, as a whole, was a challenge for the sector but suggested that duty of care transfer notes could be used to give a clear indication of all commercial waste movements.
The 2002/03 figures state that around 68 million tonnes of waste is produced annually by the commercial and industrial waste sector, which is over twice the amount of municipal waste created by the domestic sector.
Defra
Also speaking at the event, Roy Hathaway, deputy director of waste management at Defra, explained government proposals on tackling construction and industrial waste first outlined by secretary of state for the environment Hilary Benn in October (see letsrecycle.com story).
Mr Hathaway said that Defra intended to fill the “data gap” presented by having not undertaken any national survey of commercial and industrial waste arisings since 2002/03, as well as to focusing on helping businesses to recycle more waste and fostering “innovative and emerging waste solutions”.
Furthermore, he said that the department intended to work with the waste management sector itself to gain a better understanding of the pertinent issues.
He said: “We have got a meeting in the department on Monday [December 14] with major waste management companies to go into how we can get any more detail to help businesses recycling rates and will carry out national surveys next year on commercial and industrial waste in England.”
Responding to questions about government plans to change the definition of municipal waste to include more commercial waste (see letsrecycle.com story), Mr Hathaway stressed that it would not create an obligation for local authorities to collect the material.
“It doesn't say because we have changed the definition that we expect local authorities to suddenly start the collection of as much waste as possible. That is not it at all,” he said. “It means that people are collecting waste other than local authorities will be included in tonnages.”
Potential
Peter Scholes, managing director of not-for-profit environmental consultancy Urban Mines, presented some information on regional surveys of commercial and industrial waste performed by his organisation.
The studies, which took place in 2007 in the North West of England and in 2008 in Wales, were found to be broadly in line with the national survey of 2002/03 and found that there was a wide range of commercial and industrial material currently being landfilled that could be put to alternative uses.
Commenting on the commercial and industrial waste surveys, he said: “[Our] research suggests that between 27 and 83% could be recycled and 54 to 91% could be recovered, if there was a larger collection or processing infrastructure in place.”
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