London Wider Waste Strategy - London - Greater London Authority

UK Policy
The majority of UK waste management policy is drawn directly from European policy, and
legislation transposed into UK statute.
Waste Strategy 2000
Key Features
• Waste Strategy 2000 is the principal document setting out overall strategy of
challenges, targets and mechanisms for change.
• The Strategy sets the target of reducing industrial & commercial waste landfilled to
85% of 1998 levels by 2005.
• Emphasises the use of the Landfill Tax escalator as the key tool to reducing landfill.
• Sets statutory performance standards for local authority recycling in England.
• Promotes research into the development of markets for recyclate through the
establishment of the Waste and Resource Action Programme (WRAP).
• Indicates intent to strength and widen the role of producer responsibility initiatives,
the reduction and re-use of packaging and the recycling and recovery of packaging
waste.
• Recognises the need for authorities to use energy recovery facilities, although
emphasises that they should be ‘appropriately sized to avoid competition with
recycling’, and the ‘opportunities for incorporating Combined Heat and Power
technology should always be considered’.
• Reinforces the need to act upon and meet the targets set out in European
legislation.
• Affirms the use of Best Practicable Environmental Option (BPEO), the proximity
principle, and the waste hierarchy.
Waste streams addressed:
Has an impact on the management of waste through categories of source (municipal, C&I, C&D
etc.), categories of nature (inert, hazardous etc.), and categories of type (plastic, tyres,
batteries etc).
Waste Not, Want Not – A review of Waste Strategy 2000 by the Prime Minister’s
Strategy Unit (2002)
Key Features
• Not Government policy but a series of recommendations on the ‘economic and
regulatory framework’, ‘strategic investment measures’, and ‘funding and delivery’.
• Suggests increasing the landfill tax by £3 per tonne in 2005/06 and by at least £3
per tonne each year thereafter to a medium to long-term rate of £35 per tonne.
• Increase the Government’s green procurement.
• Led to the formation of DEFRA Waste Implementation Programme (WIP).
• Government responded in 2003 with the Government Response to Strategy
Unit Report ‘Waste Not, Want Not’ (DEFRA, 2003), generally endorsing the
recommendations and proposing actions to take them forward.
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