More leadership needed from councils over new waste plants

In its draft Regional Waste Management Strategy, submitted to the government yesterday, the Assembly said over 380 new waste management facilities will be needed in the region before 2025. This target figure includes 82 large-scale recycling or composting plants and seven large-scale recovery plants.

”It is time to act now and everyone has a role to play.“
– Cllr Keith Mitchell
Commenting on the draft strategy, the chairman of the South East England Regional Assembly's Regional Planning Committee, Keith Mitchell, said: “Local authorities need to show leadership when making difficult waste management decisions such as the location of new waste facilities.

“Much has been said over the last ten years about the growing mountain of waste which the south east is producing but little has actually been done. It is time to act now and everyone has a role to play,” he added.

Targets
The new infrastructure would be necessary to reach recycling and landfill diversion targets set out by the strategy. These include recycling or composting 40% of municipal waste by 2010 and 60% by 2025. And, the Assembly is aiming to divert 52% of municipal waste from landfill by 2010 and 84% by 2025.

The region currently generates 29 million tonnes of waste each year – including 4 million tonnes “imported” from London – and this figure is growing by about 3% each year.

The Assembly hopes that its strategy will cut the waste growth rate to 1% a year by 2010 and 0.5% by 2020. If the strategy is a success, the region will require landfill capacity for just 5.5 million tonnes a year from 2024, it said.

Cllr Mitchell, who is also leader of Oxfordshire county council, said there was a need to provide incentives to encourage a change in the way consumers deal with their waste. He said: “People throughout the region, the everyday producers of waste, need to think more about what they consume, what they throw away and how they do it.”

The draft Regional Waste Management Strategy is now open to public consultation until May 24, 2004. A full public examination of the document will be held in the week starting October 4, 2005.

For a full copy of the draft strategy, see the South East England Regional Assembly website.