The rise in gate fees was put down to a variety of reasons, with 56% of respondents citing an inflation increase or price review, 32% saying changes to the value of materials collected and 20% put it down to changes to contract.
The report for 2022 showed that the average gate fee in 2022 was £79 a tonne, up from £60 the previous year. This means fees have more than trebled from the £25 recorded in 2018.
This takes into account the wide range of the results received along with significant variability in the types of contract arrangement in place, as outlined below.
Contracts
The report noted that the median gross UK gate fee for contracts commenced since 1 April 2022 (£58/tonne) is lower than the median gate fee for all current contracts across the UK by £21/tonne.
However, “this insight based on only seven relevant responses for contracts commenced since 1st April 2022 and should be treated with caution,” the report stated.
In terms of contamination, 51% of authorities stated that their input contamination must not exceed 15% of total material input, while 24% of authorities stated that their MRF provider monitors and enforces excessive contamination more proactively compared to 2021.
Going forward, none of the responding authorities planned to move to a commingled collection, the report stated. 32% said that they would change to a twin stream system with a further 20% stating that they would move to a system described as ‘material presented in at least three containers at the kerbside’.
More than 40% of respondents thought the requirements to collect additional materials would result in a change of gate fee
Consistency
WRAP added in the report that English councils should consider “potential requirements set out in the Defra consistency consultation to incorporate additional materials in kerbside recycling collections and how this could impact existing and future MRF contracts”.
More than 40% of respondents thought the requirements to collect additional materials would result in a change of gate fee, while 39% didn’t know what the impact would be. A further 47% of respondents also said that their existing MRF contract allows for material streams to be added, while 28% said it did not and 26% were not sure.
Organic waste
Elsewhere in the report, WRAP also compared the cost of treating other kerbside materials too.
The median UK gate fee for food waste sent to AD was £13/tonne (for a range of -£26 to £71/tonne).
This is significantly lower than the median UK gate fee of £30/tonne in 2021/22.
In total, three contracting authorities, representing nine local authorities, provided a negative gate fee, signifying “that this is not a single authority anomaly but is occurring across multiple authority AD
contracts”.
These contracts also all commenced recently, and it is not clear if these results are anomalous to this year’s survey, WRAP added.
Energy from waste
WRAP reported that the median UK gate fee for waste sent to EfW facilities was £103/tonne (for a range of £45 to £175/tonne). This compares to a UK median gate fee of £95/tonne in the 2021/22 survey report.
When asked how the gate fee had changed, 55% suggested it had ‘increased’ whilst 34% said there had been ‘limited change’ (i.e., no more than a 5% increase or decrease). 9% stated there had been ‘no change’ and only 2% of respondents said there had been a ‘decrease’.
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