Bill will give councils powers to pilot ‘pay-as-you-throw’

31 October 2007

Local authorities will have the power to pilot ‘pay-as-you-throw’ schemes under the new Climate Change Bill, announced this week.

But, environment secretary, Hilary Benn, said councils would not be able to use the powers to raise cash, as any such schemes would have to be revenue-neutral.

The announcement came as MPs warned that recycling alone might not be enough for the UK to hit the EU’s landfill targets. The Bill was announced after DEFRA released the results of its Waste Strategy for England consultation (Surveyor, 31 May 2007) into incentives for recycling. Local authority respondents were largely in favour of the proposed new powers, with 78 for and nine against, and other groups of respondents were largely in favour.

Private individuals were the only respondents who were evenly divided between those who agreed and those who did not. In its response to the consultation, the Local Government Association said the Government should give councils a power to charge householders directly for waste management, with reduced payments for those producing less waste to reflect the ‘polluter pays’ principle, and would influence household behaviour changes. It also said schemes must be visibly directed at increasing recycling and rewarding members of the public who contributed to that.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs had estimated that 40% of household waste would need to be recycled by 2010, if EU targets on reducing landfilling were to be met, the public accounts committee highlighted this week. But ‘further increases in recycling rates depend on increasing the number of people who take part,’ the committee warned. Currently, only 57% of people were committed recyclers. But, an emphasis on recycling alone was ‘unlikely to be sufficient to comply with the Landfill Directive,’ according to the committee

New infrastructure capable of processing up to 15M tonnes of waste each year might be needed, increasing the cost of waste disposal from £2bn in 2003/04 to £3.4bn in 2009/10. But, due to the unpopularity of waste facilities and the fact that ‘there has been little collaboration between authorities’, there was ‘a significant risk’ that there would not be enough plants operating. Only six of the 25 largest waste disposal authorities are confident of meeting the 2010 EU Landfill Directive targets.

The Government should ‘live up to its responsibilities,’ for ensuring the infrastructure was in place, the LGA said. Cllr Paul Bettison, LGA environment board chair, said the private-finance initiative was ‘unlikely to alleviate short-term cost pressures’.

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Bill will give councils powers to pilot ‘pay-as-you-throw’

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