Environment Minister Elliot Morley said: “All waste authorities in a two-tier area (are) to consult on and prepare a statement on a joint strategy for the management of household waste and other similar waste.”
He explained that the WET Bill had “a range of measures provides a strong incentive for agreeing the joint strategy. The thrust of the new clauses is not to provoke division among local authorities or different tiers, but to bring about co-operation between them.” Disposal authorities will have ultimate responsibility in decision making, and they will also be responsible for paying fines applied under the Bill.
The WET Bill is intended to provide the UK with an efficient system to help it meet the landfill reduction targets of the Landfill Directive, which apply to biodegradable municipal waste. It sets out an allowance scheme by which councils will be able to trade landfill permits in order to meet their targets.
Incineration
Conservative MP Gregory Barker said he was concerned that waste diverted from landfill would be incinerated. “What troubles me and many others is that little in the Bill will stop waste that currently goes to landfill from being booted up to the next level of the hierarchy, namely incineration. There is nothing to prevent a considerable increase in incineration as a result of the clampdown on landfill,” he claimed.
Mr Morley responded: “I do not see the Bill in itself as a driver for more incineration. The Government have set clear targets for recycling and reuse, and the Bill does not remove the obligation that local authorities will have.”
But he added: “We should all be honest about the fact that there may well be a case for incineration in certain circumstances. It is neither true nor reasonable to say that it can never be part of the waste hierarchy… it would be wrong to mislead people by saying that there is no case for incineration—although nothing in the Bill impels further incineration.”
Liberal Democrat MP for Lewes Norman Baker referred to the case of East Sussex, where the district councils are high recyclers. He said because they were on track to exceed recycling targets, the disposal authority was likely to agree an incinerator contract for a guaranteed throughput of waste. He argued that this would discourage recycling more than necessary to meet targets because materials would be diverted to incineration, especially if minimisation measures proved successful.
“There is therefore a real danger that, in these two-tier areas – I think that this could arise in East Sussex – the waste disposal authority could issue an instruction to the waste collection authority effectively to cap or even reduce its recycling capacity,” he said.
Mr Morley said such a situation should not stop the collection authorities reducing biodegradable waste and revealed a DEFRA-commissioned independent review of the health and environmetnal efects of incineration and other disposal options, will be published “in the near future”.
Targets
Mr Morley indicated how recycling targets could rise abouve 33% in the next few years. “This year's target is 17%, and all the indications are that we will meet it. That is a considerable improvement on the beginning of the year, when I feared that we might not,” he said.
“The target for 2005–06 will be 25%, and the targets will be driven up to about 33 %. Furthermore, there will be a review. It should not be thought that 33% is necessarily the highest figure for which we are aiming.”
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