International Review of Waste Management Policy - Department of ...

ecent reports from PROGNOS, the EEA and Defra / Committee on Climate Change /
the Environment Agency, as well as the waste strategies of England and Wales,
indicate that interest in this area is growing. 1100 However, a key issue with target
setting in this area is that because some management methods, for example,
recycling, are assigned (in most studies) negative contributions to the climate change
indicator, the perverse consequence can arise that improvements relative to a
baseline are greater the greater is the quantity of waste in the waste stream. Hence,
absolute indicators are required, which seek reductions from a fixed level.
Key policy measures are likely to be:
875
1. The extension of producer responsibility to a wider range of materials;
2. Lifting targets for recycling under producer responsibility;
3. Strengthening of implementation of re-use measures in existing and future
producer responsibility schemes;
4. Minimum requirements for source separation schemes for:
a. Households;
b. Commerce and industry;
5. Minimum requirements, in terms of sorting, in the case of construction and
demolition waste;
6. The mandatory use – once collection schemes are of sufficient quality - of payby-use
for households and / or measures to encourage this (such as a residual
waste levy);
7. A pre-treatment requirement for landfilling to be phased in over time;
8. A ban on specific materials being landfilled or incinerated;
Other measures which might support the approach, but which, arguably, belong in
other sectors might include agri-environmental measures to encourage the use of
compost and digestate in agriculture (subject to specific standards being met). These
might mimic payments made in some Italian regions to farmers in lieu of the
improvement in the organic matter status of soils which this represents. 1101
1100 The USEPA encourages local authorities to use its WARM model to calculate greenhyouse gas
reduction benefits from recycling. See also, for example, G. Dehoust et al, Status Report on the Waste
Sector’s Contribution to Climate Protection and Possible Potentials, Federal Ministry for the
Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, August 2005; ERM (2006) Carbon Balances
and Energy Impacts of the Management of UK Wastes, Final Report for Defra, December 2006;
Eunomia (2009) Development of Marginal Abatement Cost Curves for the Waste Sector, Report for the
Committee on Climate Change, Defra and the Environment Agency; M. Skovgaard, N. Hedal and A.
Villanueva, F. Andersen and H. Larsen (2008) Municipal Waste Management and Greenhouse Gases,
ETC/RWM Working Paper 2008/1, January 2008; Prognos, with Infu and Ifeu (2008) Resource
Savings and CO2 Reduction Potential in Waste Management in Europe and the Possible Contribution
to the CO2 Reduction Target in 2020, Berlin: October 2008.
1101 See Enzo Favoino and Dominic Hogg (2008) The Potential Role of Compost in Reducing
Greenhouse Gases, Waste Management Research, 2008; pp. 26; 61.
International Review of Waste Policy: Annexes