The waste industry has urged the Government to provide less ambiguous support for incineration in its revised waste strategy, if the UK is to escape £400M-a-year fines.
The Chartered Institution of Wastes Management said that a ‘detailed statement on energy-from-waste was urgently needed’ following a National Audit Office report criticising the Government for focusing spending on increasing recycling rather than on waste-treatment facilities.
The NAO questioned the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs strategy, given the fact that increasing recycling was unlikely to help the UK to hit the EU targets to slash the amount of waste sent to landfills. It doubted whether 40% of an increased volume of biodegradable waste would be recycled by 2010, and urged funds to divert greater amounts of rubbish.
Lee Marshall, chair of the Local Authority Recycling Advisory Committee, said the feeling within local government was that the Government should come out more strongly in favour of treatment options, including incineration. ‘This would not deter increased recycling,’ he said.
A spokesman for DEFRA would not comment on the NAO report, but stressed that officials were going through the 4,000-plus responses to the draft revised waste strategy.