Responding to yesterday's publication of England's 2002/03 Municipal Waste Management Survey (see letsrecycle.com story), the Local Government Association's environment board said that the Chancellor's spending review last month was a “cut in real terms” in waste funding.
Cllr Jim Harker, vice chair of the LGA's environment board, said: “Waste budgets are already squeezed by government priority areas like education and social services. Yet despite rising levels of waste and spiralling disposal costs, the Chancellor’s three-year spending review has awarded councils a funding rise of just 0.6% in the first year – a cut in real terms.”
He said this 0.6% funding increase would only cover inflation and increases in Landfill Tax, not the new waste infrastructure needed to deliver recycling and landfill diversion targets in future years.
Cllr Harker warned: “All this at precisely the time councils need more funding to divert waste away from landfill to meet government targets – meaning many councils will have to spend before they can start to save. The inevitable result will be either increases in council tax, cuts in other services, or failure to meet national and EU targets.”
Councils face a 3 per tonne increase in Landfill Tax next year, up to 18 a tonne for waste that is not inert. And, the LGA pointed out that the amount of waste requiring collection and disposal is still increasing – up 1.8% on 2001/02 figures, to 29.3 million tonnes collected in 2002/03.
FoE
Pressure group Friends of the Earth also said more funding is needed for local authorities to boost their recycling rates. The environmental campaign group estimates that an increase of 200 million a year would ensure a “decent recycling and compost service for every household”.
But, it said penalties are needed for councils that fail to meet their targets. FoE campaigner Georgina Bloomfield said: “The government is running out of time to reach their own unambitious recycling targets. Local authorities desperately need more funding to reach the government's targets.”
Yesterday's survey confirmed provisional data released in December 2003, and showed that there had been a decrease in the proportion of municipal waste disposed of to landfill from 77% in 2001/02 to 75% in 2002/03. For the first time, there was also a drop in the amount of municipal waste going to landfill, down to 22 million tonnes in 2002/03 from 22.3 million tonnes in the previous year.
In total, the recovery rate for municipal waste in England – recycling plus energy-from-waste – is 25%, with 7.3 million tonnes of waste having some sort of value recovered in 2002/03.
Regions
Regionally in 2002/03, landfill rates were highest in the North West (84%) and lowest in the West Midlands (54%) where there is a large provision of energy recovery. Household waste recycling rates were highest in the South East region (19.7% average for councils) and the East (19.4%). The lowest recycling rate for a region was in the North East (6.6%).
Responding to claims they were not doing enough to improve their recycling rates, councils have pointed out that the data is “out of date”, and that in the mean time they have radically improved their recycling services.
Cllr Paul Murphy, Manchester city council's member for direct services, said: “These figures are 16 months out of date and we have improved our recycling rate over four-fold to 11%.”
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