The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs hinted yesterday at the CIWM conference in Torbay that it could look at the issue in the operational review of LATS expected during the autumn.
The issue has arisen because waste collected by councils from small businesses and shops is still classed as “municipal waste” – and therefore is subject to the ever-decreasing limits on the amount of biodegradable municipal waste that waste disposal authorities can send to landfill under the LATS system.
Defra is actually encouraging councils to take a leadership role in getting small businesses in their areas to recycle more waste through its new English waste strategy. But local authorities say there is an apparent “conflict” between this part of the strategy and the LATS system, which could effectively penalise councils for seeking to collect more trade waste.
“We know that there are some concerns about operating a service for commercial waste,” said Neil Thornton, director for sustainable development at Defra, “but we don't want to see LATS as a disincentive to the running of recycling services for smaller shops.”
Mr Thornton said the review of LATS in the autumn would not see a major overhaul of the system, which he said Defra sees as working well on the whole.
Councils
Many councils across England are looking at trade waste recycling services as the next step in their strategies, but some have told letsrecycle.com that they are concerned that the LATS issue could work against their efforts.
Some authorities have revealed that they are actively attempting to raise their trade waste collection prices in order to “price ourselves out of the market” – and reduce their trade waste services as a result.
“It's actually quite difficult to do,” said the recycling officer from the south of England, “since they really like the level of service we provide, and they seem to want to continue with it whatever price we charge.”
But one unitary council in the north of England said that it did not see the LATS issue as a problem, with a recycling officer explaining that trade waste recycling collections could effectively subsidise work being done to divert household waste from landfill, and that if as much of the trade waste as possible was recycled, there wouldn't be much of an impact in terms of using up landfill allowances.
In London, the Mayor Ken Livingstone has decided to consult with the European Commission concerning his belief that some boroughs may be passing some of the municipal waste landfill problem onto the private sector, to take trade waste “off the books”.
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