Reassuring progress achieved over waste indicators

The comment came from Roland Moore, of Defra's local authority waste performance unit, who was speaking last week at the Recycling and Waste Forum in Birmingham.

Mr Moore explained that waste and climate change minister Joan Ruddock was “very keen” on getting the new waste and recycling targets included as one or more of  35 targets in Local Area Agreements.

However, some local authorities have expressed concerns that the new waste performance framework is being imposed upon councils who are already performing well, and do not take into account climate change.

Framework

Under the new waste performance framework, three national indicators for waste have replaced eight Best Value Performance Indicators, such as household waste sent for recycling (BV82a) and sent to land-fill (BV82d).

The new indicators cover residual waste per household (NI 191), percentage of household waste sent for reuse, recycling and composting (NI 192) and percentage of municipal waste landfilled (NI 193).

Councils are free to decide whether they include the indicators as one or more of 35 targets they have to choose from a wider list of 198. The three waste indicators come out of a total of 13 environmental indicators submitted by Defra. Agreement, through government regional officers, is due by June (see letsrecycle.com story).

Mr Moore explained that progress so far on getting waste indicators agreed through local area agreements was “very reassuring”.

He said: “It's a crunch point in getting indicators in. We are strongly encouraging local authorities to consider waste targets, particularly where there is a need for improvement, and where there is a risk or opportunity for securing the target in local area agreements.

“I will be discussing the targets with local government offices over the next two weeks,” he added.

Mr Moore added that the government would also be looking at introducing a carbon indicator for waste, in line with goals set out in the Waste Strategy 2007.

He said: “The Waste Strategy did indicate carbon indicators for waste and that is something we will take forward over the next Comprehensive Spending Review period.”

Opportunity

Mr Moore claimed that N191 – which measures residual waste per household – provided a new opportunity for councils to focus on reducing household waste “for the first time”, and that N192 put reuse on a par with recycling and composting.

And, for the first time councils would be assessed on how much municipal waste they sent to landfill as opposed to just household waste to “keep focus on the entire municipal waste stream,” he explained.

However, the Defra official said that home composting would still not count towards recycling and composting performance in NI 192 because the accounting methodology was “not yet available”. The role of home composting still remains under consideration within LATS (see letsrecycle.com story).

Metals recycled from incinerator bottom ash would also not count because Defra wanted to encourage “movement up the waste hierarchy”, he added, noting that WRAP was strongly against the idea.

He commented: “We do not want to discourage investment in front end treatment.”

Changes

Responding to Mr Moore's comments, Andrew Craig, of the Tees Valley Joint Strategy Unit and policy officer for the Local Authority Recycling Advisory Committee, welcomed NI 191 – residual household waste per household – for not containing “any perverse incentives.”

In particular, he said it would help overcome the “inequities” caused by composting under the old performance framework, in which rural councils can perform better than urban authorities due to their higher composting tonnages.

However, he claimed that that recent clarifications in the law requiring councils to collect waste from institutions such as prisons and schools (known as “schedule 2” waste ) would lumber some councils with more household waste than others and disguise any progress in waste minimisation and recycling.

He said: “If it is recorded now we will see a steep increase in waste and obscure progess in residual waste made.”

On indicator NI 192 – percentage of waste sent for reuse, recycling and composting – Mr Craig said that the government continued to favour suburban and rural councils over urban ones, due to the inclusion of composting tonnages.

Concluding his speech, Mr Craig called for more work to be done on the targets to tackle climate change and introduce waste targets for industry.

He said: “New waste management performance indicators are appropriate to the Waste Strategy 2007, but what about climate change? A lot more work needs to be done on climate change metrics and targets.”

Cambridgeshire

Emma Joy, waste partnership co-ordinator for RECAP (Recycling in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough), said some councils were being being contacted to include waste targets when they were already doing really well on managing their waste.

She said: “For the last four years Cambridgeshire county council have been the highest performing local authority for recycling and composting, with impressive increases in performance across the RECAP partnership … however Cambridgeshire were still approached to explain why they would not be including waste indicator in their set of 35 key indicators.”