The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is expected to publish its final thinking on plans to grant councils the powers to introduce a “revenue-neutral scheme” to penalise residents for not recycling and incentivise those who do.
Through the Climate Change Bill, the Government is hoping to reduce carbon emissions by at least 60% by 2050 – and Defra claims that financial incentives for recycling alone could save between 500 thousand and 1 million tonnes Carbon Dioxide equivalent a year.
Speaking to letsrecycle.com on Friday, a Defra spokeswoman said: “We hope to make an announcement imminently in response to the recycling incentives consultation, either next week of the week after.”
She confirmed: “We are looking to introduce the Climate Change Bill as soon as possible after the Queen's speech in its changed form. We are hoping for Royal Assent in the Spring – depending on parliamentary timetabling.”
Powerful
In the English Waste Strategy 2007, the Government says that incentivising householders financially to reduce the amount of non-recycled waste they throw a way can be a “powerful tool” in reducing overall waste quantities and reducing costs (see letsrecycle.com story).
The proposal followed campaigning by the Local Government Association for the government to give councils powers to charge for waste collections, as the UK is believed to be the only country in Europe which bans councils from introducing financial incentives over waste (see letsrecycle.com story).
However, some concerns have been raised by councils that the scheme being proposed by Defra – which will be “revenue-neutral” – will not be a straight-forward charging scheme as found on the continent, and could lead to operational difficulties.
Writing iearlier this autumn in its official response to the consultation, the Local Authority Recycling Advisory Committee (LARAC) said: “It would appear that local authorities desire the power to charge for household waste but are concerned as to the practicalities and motivations behind the government's proposals that are at a tangent to the majority of waste charging regimes in developed nations.”
Other concerns include uncertainty over how schemes would be set up and funded, with some councils claiming they might not have enough to set them up following a disappointment settlement for services in this month's Comprehensive Spending Review (see letsrecycle.com story).
Hampshire county council is one authority “strongly” opposing household incentive schemes, with its leader Cllr Ken Thornber warning that the costs of administering and enforcing an incentive scheme “may significantly outweigh any advantages and have a negative effect on recycling behaviour”.
He said: “Our emphasis towards recycling has been about providing infrastructure and systems to make recycling easier for households, including support and encouragement for residents. There's a real danger that goodwill and environmental responsibility will be lost.”
Concerning the costs of administering financial incentive schemes, one suggestion put forward by Defra has been for the government to grant aid to get schemes going.
Defra's Sarah Fisher told the West Midlands Waste Forum in July that Defra was “keen to fund local Authorities that want to introduce financial incentives for recycling, pending the outcome of the Comprehensive Spending Review.”
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