The consultation centres around the waste and recycling indicators which will be among the wide-ranging 200 indicators being developed for local authorities by the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG).
Also under discussion are the role of home composting and whether this should be accounted for in recycling figures, local area agreements and an overall mandatory standard for local authorities.
The consultation is seen as reflecting a change of language by Defra, with the moving away from targets towards indicators as part of a local authority's overall performance measurement.
However, councils will still be expected to have met their recycling targets to 31 March 2006 and many are being called in by the Department or regional offices to be ticked off for their failures. For 2007/08 council in England were given specified levels to reach through the best value regime.
Indicators
Waste and recycling indicators are likely to make up several of the 35 indicators which will be given by Defra to the DCLG as part of the 200 in total proposed for councils on all service areas. The indicators could come into force in April 2008 if legislative timetables are met.
The change in Defra's stance – switching from targets to indicators – comes after its success earlier this year in getting the Treasury to agree to increase the Landfill Tax standard rate – currently £24 per tonne – by £8 per tonne each year from April 2008 until at least 2010/11 (see letsrecycle.com story).
A consequence of this is that councils are being forced to recycle more and divert material from landfill. And, the move away from targets also comes because the Department considers that it is working now from a much higher base of 27% recycling compared to the low figures of 2000 and before.
Looking beyond the current proposed indicators the Department, in its consultation, points to the future development of greenhouse gas indicators which could eventually be integrated into waste and recycling targets. These are likely to form the base for waste and recycling work because of the importance of climate change issues to all of Defra's activities.
WasteDataFlow
In the consultation Defra suggests that three local indicators should be set up which will be measured through the WasteDataFlow system used by councils to record their waste and recycling progress.
Three “local” indicators are proposed:
1. Household waste not reused, recycled or composted per head.
2. Percentage of household waste reused, recycled and composted.
3. Percentage of municipal waste landfilled (counties/unitary and waste disposal authorities).
Some of the thinking behind the indicators is that Defra wants more of a focus on what is not recycled, in the sense that some councils need to be told: “Yes you are doing a brilliant job at recycling but your bins are full everyday.”
Reuse
On reuse, the department is suggesting that material is included in household waste calculations and would apply to items discarded which come into the possession of the local authority and are sent for reuse as well as material from the household waste stream that goes to third parties working for the cuncil. This is expected to include CA site material, bulky collections and work by the Furniture Reuse Network.
The change to the reuse rules should help encourage reuse as some councils are thought to have not allocated funding towards reuse because this would not help achieve recycling targets.
Energy from waste
Defra's decision to put out for consultation the idea of counting metals recovered from incineration ash for recycling represents a major change in policy. However, while it would add to the recycling figures it would also reduce the percentage of waste recovered through energy as the weight would be deducted.
Metals in incineration which can be recovered relatively easily from bottom ash are thought to represent about 2.5% of the input waste.
Home composting
The Waste and Resources Action Programme has spent a considerable amount of time on developing a model to count home-composting into recycling figures. While WRAP had hoped this would be introduced last year or even in the waste strategy it still seems some way off. The organisation gave out 850,000 composting bins up to March 2006 but it cannot count any of this towards its target of increasing recycling and composting.
Defra, in the consultation, will only say that it is considering accounting for home composting in the new performance indicator on recycling and composting. But it points that a central concern behind the idea is to whether any such data would be legitimate.
Minimum standard for 2010/2013
While Defra is not this time around looking to set targets, it is also consulting on whether to set a “single mandatory minimum” standard against the waste indicators for the three years 2010/11, 2011/12 and 2012/13 with all councils in England having the same minimum standard. The question posed in the consultation document is whether this should be based on either household waste reuse/recycling/composting or on household waste not reused/recycled/composted per head. The latter approach could help to encourage local authorities to think less about the amount of waste for recycling and about what is left in terms of arisings.
The consultation paper is available at the Defra website with responses due in by August 16 2007 and these should be sent to: indicators@defra.gov.uk
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