Barbara Herridge, executive director of Waste Watch, said in her introduction to the report: “Although many would agree that 190 million is not nearly enough to provide recycling schemes that would capture 33% of household recyclables and compostables, it is a large enough amount to make serious inroads to meeting this target.”
She added: “It could be argued that there is now enough money available to help the UK make the shift from waste management to resource management. What remains to be seen is whether there is enough imagination, foresight, will and daring to make it happen.”
The report looks at how the money should be allocated and provides an insight into the discussions that will take place in finalising the allocation of the monies. It also considers the relationship between the 140 million and the New Opportunities Funding and other funds such as the landfill tax credit scheme, regeneration funds and packaging compliance schemes and how these might enhance government funds.
Different methods of allocating the 140 million are addressed in the report including those based on individual local authority recycling targets, on previous recycling performance and by region.
Tradable recycling credits
The report concludes that it is not sufficient to simply increase landfill tax because this only provides an incentive to divert material from landfill and not to increase recycling and composting. Possible policies which could be considered are as follows:
- Increase landfill tax and extend to incineration and thermal treatment.
- Establish a system of tradable recycling credits in which credits are generated by local authorities exceeding a pre-specified target recycling/composting rate and those failing to meet the target are required to purchase credits up to their target level.
- Introduce a local authority tax based on the generation of residual waste (i.e. waste not recycled/composted) per capita. A target level would be established and those above this would pay a tax, those below would receive net payments.
- Maintain the landfill tax at its current level, extend to incineration /thermal treatment and recycle a proportion of the revenue to local authorities in proportion to the quantity of material recycled/composted. This is similar to the mechanism used to tax NOx emissions in Sweden.
The report was funded by Biffaward and the Local Authority Recycling Advisory Committee (LARAC). Research was carried out by Dominic Hogg of Eunomia Research and Consulting Ltd with assistance from the Community Recycling Network.
“No Waste of Money” is available on the Waste Watch web site.
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