In minutes obtained from the group's third meeting in London last week, experts criticised the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs for not creating sufficient incentive to build recycling plants through its Private Finance Initiative funding scheme.
The group, which is providing advice to help the government to deliver its new English waste strategy, said that new council proposals for PFI contracts were increasingly focusing on incineration, rather than recycling.
Defra has £2 billion available to support new waste infrastructure through the PFI system over the next three years. Local authorities are required to meet certain criteria regarding their proposals in order to gain PFI support, and must have Outline Business Case proposals agreed by Defra before any credits are awarded.
The papers from the meeting stated that: “Some members felt that the requirements for local authorities to ensure PFI waste infrastructure projects provide sufficient focus on recycling did not go far enough. This meant there was a risk that government was sending a message to stakeholders that recycling was not high up the agenda and incineration was more desirable.”
“Proven”
Defra's Neil Thornton, who was chairing the meeting, added that the reason the technologies supported by Defra were limited to technologies like incineration was because many “cleaner” technologies were not yet proven.
He said: “When securing private sector investment for waste treatment technologies banks will only invest in proven technologies. Government has invested £30 million in the New Technologies Demonstration Programme to find workable waste treatment technologies. A mechanical biological treatment system is a proven technology with many examples already in operation.”
BERR
The representative of the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform told the meeting that it had re-organised its energy from waste team in order to drive the technology forward.
Officials explained that because security of supply was becoming a big issue in the UK energy market, the government would be pursuing energy from waste in a bid to limit UK exposure to “volatile energy markets”, and would be convening EfW workshops in the near future.
Funding
Also at the meeting – which was attended by representatives from organisations including LARAC, CIWM, Friends of the Earth and the ESA – concerns were raised over cuts in government funding for waste and recycling projects like WRAP (see letsrecycle.com story).
Some claimed that the way in which Defra had announced details of delivery bodies' 2008/09 funding settlement also lacked clarity – which Defra said it would try to rectify.
“Real momentum was starting to build on tackling the issue of waste and now was not the time for government to scale back on resources and investment in dealing with this issue,” stated the record of the meeting.
The next Waste Stakeholder Group Meeting will be held on Thursday, May 22.
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