There may be trouble ahead… but we asked for it

Steve Lee, chief executive of CIWM, explores some of the critical issues affecting the UK’s waste management sector and argues that progress always comes at a price

After over a decade of encouraging progress, waste management in the UK is at something of a watershed and we could be forgiven for feeling that the way ahead looks like many of our roads today – full of potholes. In parallel with the economy, we are going through a period of uncertainty, caught between a number of different and, on occasion, contradictory forces.

At a time when waste planning is up in the air, as a result of the Government’s decision to treat waste as a special case and leave it out of the draft National Planning Policy Framework, we have Secretaries of State intervening quite dramatically in projects in a way that could set dangerous precedents for waste and other infrastructure delivery in the future. Meanwhile, planning guidance has been radically streamlined, regional planning bodies dismantled and public sector purse strings tightened at precisely the same time as local communities and authorities are expected to take on much more responsibility for complex decisions about development and infrastructure in their area. More local involvement in these decisions is certainly a good thing, but we can’t ignore that fact that few communities have ever welcomed waste facilities on their patch. There also remains the question of how the significantly increased levels of consultation and engagement enshrined in the new Localism Act are going to be resourced.

More clarity on these and other waste planning issues will have to wait until the National Waste Management Plan (NWMP) and annexed PPS10 guidance is available, but already the timetable has slipped for these. In the Waste Policy Review published in June, it appeared that the NWMP would be published in spring 2011 – it now appears that we will have to wait until summer 2012 for a consultation draft, with the final version in spring 2013. That is a long wait for any industry, especially one that is tasked with delivering national and EU targets.

For these, as well as for obvious economic reasons, private investors remain reluctant to engage with the risks associated with waste projects – be they operational, ‘political’ or planning risks. At a time when it is evident that resource efficiency requires significant new infrastructure to capture the valuable materials and energy in our waste and put it back to work, the landscape is less than conducive. There are, of course, some glimmers of light; the Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg announced recently that waste was one of three “possible early priorities” for support from the Green Investment Bank and could be benefitting from the investment as soon as April 2012.

The problem, however, is more extensive and deep rooted than that. In research part-sponsored by CIWM earlier this year, a number of suggestions were put forward to improve the situation. Two of the key ones are that Government must ensure co-ordination between departments whose policy remits encompass waste in order to provide investors with greater confidence in policy stability, and it must also ensure that financial incentives put in place to support the business case for waste infrastructure provide certainty to developers and financiers.

These calls for stability and certainty are not new, many organisations and industry bodies across many sectors have expressed them, but they bear repeating because it is not evident that they are being heard. Certainly when it comes to waste, we not only have delay and uncertainty over planning and future policy, but we have seen a number of changes to renewable energy incentives (FITs and ROCs) that threaten to undermine confidence and have certainly demonstrated the Government’s intention to downgrade its support for energy from waste. Given that market confidence is, as we have seen in the context of the eurozone crisis, a sensitive and unpredictable commodity, our sector remains very concerned that the current conditions are not favourable in terms of establishing a coherent picture of the future direction of travel and unlocking funding for the infrastructure needed to deliver.

In a wider context, consumers too could be forgiven for being confused. Having got the recycling message, and become accustomed, over more than a decade in many cases, to collection cycles that often alternate recycling and residual waste, householders are now getting some very different signals from Government and the media about what their collection system should look like. That there should be money made available to help councils to improve their collections services is commendable in times like these – but we must all work together to make sure the outcome builds on what we have collectively achieved so far in diverting our waste from landfill. It must, at the end of the day, benefit the environment as much as it benefits those who believe they have a right to a weekly residual rubbish collection.

And where is the vision for the future? Speaking at WRAP’s AGM recently, Jonathan Porritt dared to utter the magic word ‘less’, and observed that this concept has not gained any significant traction in a society still predicated on maximising consumption and profits. Can our determination to secure economic growth be made to dovetail with a fundamental rethink of how we use our raw materials and energy reserves. These are tough questions that will hopefully be exercising minds at Defra as it embarks on the initial phase of the UK’s Waste Prevention Plan, due to be completed by December 2013.

This plan must not, like many Government documents, be an overarching affair with fine words and little substance. It needs to go well beyond talking about incentivising people to do the right thing, encouraging an already beleaguered third sector to set up more re-use schemes, relying on ‘voluntary agreements’ with UK plc, and producing impressive resource flow maps. Waste prevention is a key element in resource efficiency, economic competitiveness, carbon reduction and climate change mitigation – and the plan needs to recognise this. It must put forward credible measures to strip waste out of the supply chain, starting at the design stage. It needs to put more emphasis on end-of-life recyclability and providing the right information at point of purchase so that consumers can make easy and genuinely informed choices. It must incorporate current work on resource security and rare materials to safeguard their availability to the UK economy.

This is just a snapshot of the challenges ahead. But before we get too disheartened and cynical, perhaps we should recognise that many of the issues we are grappling with today are part of the situation we have been working to bring about. Our industry doesn’t want to be the one that makes our waste disappear quietly and cheaply into a hole in the ground. We want to be part of the resource revolution, part of the solution to climate change, part of a low carbon economy. To do this, we have to communicate clearly what our industry needs to be able to do this – be it on planning, the Green Investment Bank, regulation, Producer Responsibility or myriad other topics. We also have to be more prepared to put our head above the parapet, engage with different stakeholders, and explain and justify our practices, decisions and technologies.

In short, for better or for worse, waste is now at the heart of public and political debate and our role going forward is to do our best to shape and inform the debate so that we emerge from these challenging times with better infrastructure, a more engaged and responsible public, and businesses that see the commercial benefits of sustainable waste management and resource efficiency.

And we should not forget that the challenges we can see on the horizon might be overtaken by events. Concepts such as energy and food security, water availability, and future supply of rare materials are starting to be taken seriously and will ultimately change our attitudes to waste and wasteful behaviour across society.

Put simply, maybe our current tribulations are just natural growing pains as waste jostles for its rightful place on a new and bigger stage. And as a growing and vibrant sector, we are certainly up for the challenge!