The decision, made yesterday (July 15) by its Full Council, is a significant step in the formation of a comprehensive strategy for Essex and backs investment in new technologies to treat residual waste and push the county's recycling rate to 60% by 2020.
We spent a lot of time working up a strategy that would not only reduce waste and increase recycling but would make sure that residents were not bearing the brunt of the increasing rise in landfill tax through their Council Tax
Cllr Tracey Chapman, Essex county council
The 73-page document highlighted that more needed to be done to divert waste from landfill, which could include the adoption of technologies such as anaerobic digestion (AD) for source-segregated organic wastes, and the introduction of treatment plants using Mechanical Biological Treatment (MBT).
Councillor Tracey Chapman, cabinet member for environment and waste, said: “It is really great news for residents that the waste strategy has been approved. We spent a lot of time working up a strategy that would not only reduce waste and increase recycling but would make sure that residents were not bearing the brunt of the increasing rise in landfill tax through their Council Tax.”
She added: “The cost of sending a tonne of household rubbish to landfill is due to double to £48 by 2010-11 so by employing a strategy that looks to reduce the amount of waste sent to landfill we are ensuring that our residents don't get faced with a huge bill further down the line.”
Drivers
The strategy is intended to be adopted by Essex's 12 district and borough councils, as well as the county council, who together make up the Essex Waste Partnership, and is driven by the county's need to comply with the rising cost of Landfill Tax, the EU Landfill Directive and the Landfill Allowance Trading Scheme (LATS).
The report also claims that local authorities in the area also face challenging local recycling and composting targets in the short term, having reached a 38% recycling rate for this year.
The remaining district and borough councils will now take the strategy to their councils, with the potential to adopt it by the autumn, with the exception of Southend-on-Sea borough council which, as a unitary authority, has already developed its own municipal waste strategy.
Consultation
Waste has traditionally been an important issue in Essex due to the fact that landfill sites in the county take a degree of London's municipal waste.
But, the progress of the Strategy comes despite a low public response to a consultation held on the strategy earlier this year, with less than 5,000 responses received which equated to less than 1% of the 500,000 questionnaires that were sent out.
Of the 4,479 Essex residents who did respond to the questionnaires sent out, 84% claimed that they would be eager to see MBT technology introduced once all other recycling and composting measures had been achieved.
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