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34 Mayor of London Making waste work in London The Mayor’s Draft Business Waste Management Strategy the Landfill Directive for municipal waste and their statutory recycling and composting performance targets, which are only for household waste. LATS has effectively acted as a disincentive for local authorities to undertake a role in non-household waste management because by reducing their non-household waste collections they can artificially provide themselves with a ‘safety net’. London's local authority-provided business collections peaked in 2004/05, when over a million tones of non-household waste was collected. In 2006/07, just 680,000 tonnes was collected 70 , a fall of around a third. The implication is that a reduction in waste to landfill is being reported where in fact much is still going to landfill, just under a different label – as commercial waste rather than municipal waste. 3.16 Offering waste services to businesses would not negatively affect local authorities’ ability to achieve LATS, where services manage the collected waste through recycling, composting or advanced waste technologies. Equally, as the types of materials produced from retail, office and hospitality activities are closely similar to those produced by households, household services could be delivered to commercial businesses without a significant change to services. 3.17 This opportunity is not yet being realised in London. Non-household municipal waste accounts for about a quarter of London’s municipal waste, around one million tonnes, yet just 8.1 per cent of non-household municipal waste was recycled in 2006/07 71 . 3.18 Setting statutory targets for local authorities has made a huge impact on household recycling performance over the last few years. In 2006/07, 22.9 per cent of London’s household waste was recycled, up from just nine per cent in 2000/01 72 . The Mayor believes that setting statutory municipal recycling targets would increase the amount of business municipal waste recycled and would act as an incentive to local authorities to get involved in local business waste management. It is unfortunate that the new indicators 73 , announced by the government in November 2007, again fail to incorporate all municipal waste. Targeting waste 3.19 The government expects levels of commercial and industrial waste landfilled to fall by 20 per cent in 2010 compared to 2004 and is proposing to set a new national target for the reduction of commercial and industrial waste going to landfill 74 . Setting landfill reduction targets will send a signal of the improved sustainability expected from the business community but must be ambitious and be accompanied by recycling targets.
Making waste work in London The Mayor’s Draft Business Waste Management Strategy Mayor of London 35 3.20 The government proposes, in Waste Strategy 2007, and subject to further analysis, to restrict certain materials from landfill and develop policies to effect a reduction in its use 75 . In February 2007, in response to disappointment in the impact of the Thematic Strategy on the Prevention and Recycling of Waste 76 , the European Parliament called for a total ban on landfilling of all recycled materials by 2020, which would be extended to all residual waste by 2025 77 . The Mayor supports further restrictions as part of the drive to continue to reduce landfill. Table 2 shows how far behind the government is in introducing further restrictions compared to European neighbours and provides a considerable incentive to move forward on their proposal. Table 2: EU Member States with supplementary approaches to landfill State Action Germany 1993 Ban on all non-treated wastes to landfill Netherlands 1995 Ban on all wastes that can be reused or recovered Sweden 1996 Ban on non-treated municipal waste to landfill France 2002 Ban on landfilling non-residual waste Sweden 2005 Ban on organic waste to landfill Source: Waste Strategy 2007, Defra May 2007, Table 3.1, page 47 3.21 A concern with the Landfill Allowance Trading Scheme is that it drives waste from the bottom of the waste hierarchy up only one step to the next poorest solution – incineration – rather than focusing on implementing the waste hierarchy from the top down. Research commissioned by the GLA 78 has shown that the incineration of mixed biomass and non-biomass waste is a net contributor to climate change. In electricity only mode, the mode under which all of London’s existing and proposed incinerators operate, incineration generates up to 83 kg of CO 2 equivalent per tonne of waste treated and therefore contributes to climate change. 3.22 It is likely that the government’s proposed policy to restrict recyclable materials from landfill will be linked to their priority waste materials: paper, food, glass, aluminium, wood, plastics and textiles. Such a restriction could force waste into management routes further up the waste heirarchy unless government sets material-specific recycling targets and puts recycling infrastructure in place to ensure recycled materials are not simply burnt, in the drive to divert material from landfill. The government’s carbon assessment 80 of the policy assumes plastics, paper and card, textiles, metals and glass are recycled but sets no further policy to guarantee this.
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