 Local authorities do not receive credit towards recycling targets for encouraging home composting |
Speaking in a question time session at a Recycle for Hampshire anniversary event last week, Natasha Poole from the ROTATE local authority team at the Waste and Resources Action Programme indicated that Defra had agreed that this would happen. Ms Poole said: “This will allow local authorities to calculate how much they divert through home composting and will count towards meeting LATS.”
Ms Poole was responding to a question from Rushmoor council, which asked why there was no credit within recycling rates from home composting.
LATS is the Landfill Allowance Trading Scheme, which operates in England and Scotland and as LAS – without the trading component – in Wales. It is used to measure and develop councils’ performance in diverting BMW from landfill. At present home composting volumes cannot be counted as material kept out of landfill but the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is to review this as part of a LATS review in 2007.
It is understood that any change could be delayed until 2008.
Modelling
Julian Parfitt, principal analyst in WRAP’s policy and evaluation unit explained to letsrecycle.com that his organisation had been working on modelling home composting for the past two years, which meant that they had been able to monitor results for two growing seasons.
He said: “A lot of local authorities have written in and said they would like home composting volumes to count as a contribution towards meeting LATS targets. Defra have become very supportive and are very much in favour of including it.”
One of WRAP’s findings is that there is more home composting because the baby-boomer generation are now in properties with gardens, and have more leisure time to garden as a hobby. Consequently they are carrying out more home composting.
Another factor is that a number of local authorities are actively encouraging home composting.
While home composting may count towards LATS figures, there has been no resolution yet of whether the data might be added to local authority best value performance indicator totals for recycling and composting.
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The government is understood to be aware of the perverse nature of the Best Value Performance Indicator system, which can see local authorities being championed for higher rates of recycling because garden waste collection schemes push tonnages collected up while this can consequently mean that waste arisings are up as well.
While LATS may well be reviewed to take into account the benefits of home composting, it is less certain whether recycling and composting targets could be changed to promote home composting.
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