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New household waste and recycling targets

Tomorrow sees the release of a new English waste strategy, and John Burns, Director of Defra’s Waste Implementation Programme spoke about it at the National Audit Conference in London; “The waste strategy will be out on Thursday, it will say something about household charging and recycling targets and where we will go in future, and it will say quite a lot about anaerobic digestion and what it potentially has to offer.”

“It will also say something about residual waste technologies and what the government sees as more preferable,” he added.

The new strategy was due to be released last year, but was held back in order to spend time on giving it a more evinronmentally friendly focus.

The new strategy favours anaerobic digestion of food waste, which could involve Councils collecting this seperately from other waste in the future.

Philip Ward, director of waste implementation programmes at the Waste and Resources Action Programme, commented: “There are six million tonnes of post consumer food waste produced in the UK each year, and this is the next frontier. Separate collections of food waste followed by anaerobic digestion looks like the best cost and environmental option.”

However, Ashley Chaplin, waste development manager for Portsmouth city council, questioned this approach, “In Hampshire we have incinerators and anaerobic digestion is quite expensive and may not be recognised in the face of proven technology such as energy from waste.”

Although these new rules seem to be heading in a proactive direction, Councils may struggle to cope with the increased Landfill Taxes, and talk on how to charge households for recycling and disposal has begun.