SITA UK and Veolia launch waste manifestoes

Speaking at a launch event for the Veolia document, entitled 'The Waste Manifesto – time to throw out the old thinking', the company's deputy chief executive, Paul Levett, explained that the company had issued the document because they were in a “unique position to see how the industry is developing”.

And, the company's chief executive, Jean-Dominique Mallet, added that “we strongly believe that the waste industry needs to express a view”, explaining that “we're pretty confident in what we believe in but we are ready to be challenged”.

In the manifesto, the company says that it aims to “play our part in educating the people we serve, in short, helping to transform waste and attitudes”, and outlines what it sees as the key challenges and potential policy changes for a number of issues, including environmental permitting, PFI, anaerobic digestion, commingled collections and hazardous waste.

Among the policies Veolia advocates are incentive-based schemes – such as the RecycleBank initiative it helped to launch in Windsor and Maidenhead earlier this month (see letsrecycle.com story), a “holistic” approach to choosing waste treatment technologies, and an end to councils dis-aggregating major waste projects.

However, at the launch, Mr Levett came out in opposition to potential material-specific landfill bans, as mooted by environment secretary Hilary Benn the day before (see letsrecycle.com story), claiming that Landfill Tax was a strong enough driver.

“I really do think that, at £72 per tonne, nobody is going to be landfilling anything that doesn't need to be landfilled, so landfill bans are unnecessary,” he said.

Veolia is expected to publish the manifesto on its website next week.

SITA UK

Meanwhile, in its manifesto, entitled 'Achieving the vision of no more waste – engaging in the circular economy', SITA UK, backed a range of proposals which, it claimed, would “engage waste management further in the circular economy”.

The company explained in the document that its goal was “to get to a point where the majority of waste materials will have been reused, recycled or recovered for their energy content.”

“We want to reach a stage where there is no longer any 'waste', because we recognise the intrinsic value of the materials we handle as a secondary resource,” it added.

Some of the changes advocated in the document to achieve the circular economy model include: source-separation for commercial and industrial sector recycling collections; extended producer responsibility; support for quality as well as quantity of recyclables; support for combined heat and power; and, pushing for more support for EfW in the ROCs system of green energy subsidies.

Other policy changes to win support include the introduction of a 'minimum recycled content' for selected products, landfill restrictions for materials that can used in energy recovery facilities, and rewards for the waste sector and businesses for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by using recycled materials.

SITA UK's director of external affairs, Gev Eduljee, explained that the manifesto “reflected the move to resources being the new foundation of waste management, alongside a move away from landfill.”

The SITA UK manifesto is available here.