Speech by Joan Ruddock MP to the North West Waste Conference, Manchester - 04 February 2008
Thank you for your welcome and introduction. It is a very great pleasure to be here and I am sorry that it will be such a short visit. I’m here to talk to you about waste, but I would much rather talk to you about resources.
Official statistics tell us that each year England generates 100 million tonnes of waste from household, commerce and industry. Much of this, as you know, ends up in landfill where it degrades and generates up to 40 per cent of the UK’s methane – or about 3 per cent of our total greenhouse gas emissions.
But these calculations don’t even begin to take into account the resources lost or the extra emissions created when those products dumped in landfill are replaced.
It is obvious we cannot continue as we are. Our current consumption and production patterns cannot be sustained. The debate really is over. The science is clear. The economic message is stark. And climate change is upon us.
It is now not a question of whether we need to act but what we need to do to stabilise our climate.
Last November, the Prime Minister announced that the UK would continue to be at the forefront of the fight against climate change. He said that the UK may need to cut its emissions by up to 80%, rather than the ‘60%’ that is laid out in our Climate Change Bill.
There are many areas that can help meet this climate challenge; energy, our homes, our transport and of course waste.
Traditional ways of dealing with waste have a considerable carbon footprint, not only from landfill methane emissions but also from the energy and raw materials needed to collect and move it around.
That’s why reducing waste is so important. That’s why everyone should reuse or recycle what they can to save on raw materials. That’s why recovering energy from waste is vital when we can’t reduce, re-use or recycle. And that’s why where possible we should aim to achieve the greatest carbon benefits through combined heat and power.
Achieving these objectives – which were of course set out in our Waste Strategy published last year - is key to making a real contribution to our climate change goals.
It is encouraging to see what progress is being made in sustainable waste management here in the North West. The region’s recycling rate increased over 5% during the last reporting year. But I have to caution you not to be too pleased with yourselves, because the region has some of the lowest local authority recycling performers in the country. So, despite some success, there’s still a lot of work to be done.
Solid foundations are, I think, the key and I’m told they have been laid here in the North West over the last 8 or so years, with strong working partnerships among the local authorities.
The strength of these relationships is demonstrated by the fact that the amount of waste being generated has begun to level out over the last few years. In fact the amount of household waste has reduced by 4%.
This success has been underpinned by the fact that the North West has been the most successful region in the country in obtaining Government PFI credits. This £320m investment will contribute towards infrastructure contracts worth several billion pounds to help the area deliver an effective sustainable waste management service to residents and businesses alike.
It is vital that this strategic waste treatment infrastructure is up and running as soon as possible – and I’ve already been lobbied as I walked into the room about making sure this happens! Not only for the good of the community and general environment but also to ensure that financial penalties are not incurred.
I fully appreciate that there are issues which still need to be addressed. Many of you in this room face significant challenges in changing the mindset of local residents and businesses alike.
At heart I am an optimist and I think you will succeed. The seeds of change have already been sown. You just have to look at a city like Preston, which has managed to increase its household waste recycling rate sixfold over the last 5 years. They are also pioneering a 2 to 3 year trial to collect food waste from densely populated inner city housing estates for local composting. The trial covers over 7,000 homes in a culturally diverse community involving participation rates approaching 90%. Since 2005 nearly 500 metric tonnes of waste has been collected. Preston is seeking, following successful trials, to extend this service to all its inner city homes in the next financial year.
Over 230 local authority officials and waste contractors have visited Preston to see for themselves how the service operates.
But as ever, more needs to be done to meet our future targets and to make a real impact on the climate challenge. Building on the significant progress we have made to date we need to look for ways to raise our game. Our shared vision needs not only to embrace the short and medium term but also the long-term; only then will we realise our ambitions of waste minimisation and resource efficiency.
That is why the Waste Strategy puts a greater emphasis and a greater focus on waste prevention through a new target to reduce the amount of household waste not re-used, recycled or composted from over 22.2 million tonnes in 2000 to 15.8 million tonnes in 2010 and an aspiration to reduce it further to 12.2 million tonnes in 2020. Clearly a very ambitious goal.
Higher national targets have also been set for: the recycling and composting of household waste – at least 40% by 2010, 45% by 2015 and 50% by 2020; and for the recovery of municipal waste – 53% by 2010, 67% by 2015 and 75% by 2020.
But even targets are not enough because we need leadership and we need responsibility in all the spheres in which we operate. We need continued commitment from Government, local authorities and the private sector if we are going to meet those targets. And we need investment.
In recognition of the need for local authorities to invest in smaller scale “front end” infrastructure, such as recycling and composting facilities, December’s local government finance settlement included a £185 million Waste Infrastructure Capital Grants fund to be spent over the next three years.
We also need greater commitment from the public. In October Hilary Benn announced that the Climate Change Bill will provide a power for local authorities to pilot incentives for household waste minimisation and recycling. A maximum of five local authorities will be granted permission to pilot the schemes. And we’ve committed up to £1.5 million per year over three years to help support those pilots.
Recycling levels are rising, as I indicated at the start of this speech, but we still need to do something about the inevitable residual waste left over in our black bins. And we have observed that some of our European neighbours have seen higher levels of recycling in tandem with high levels of energy recovery.
To this end, in 2006, together with “4ps and Partnerships UK”, Defra set up the Waste Infrastructure Delivery Programme. This unit, and some of you will have had experience of it, I’m sure, helps local authorities accelerate investment in the large scale infrastructure required for processing residual waste - but importantly without compromising efforts to minimise waste and increase recycling. This extra processing capacity is essential to help reduce the amount of our waste ending up in landfill.
And we’re already seeing a difference. Recent projects have met this challenge and are becoming more ambitious, yet realistic, when it comes to increasing recycling, diverting more waste from landfill, and increasing low or no waste growth.
Further progress will come from the work of Defra’s New Technologies Demonstrator Programme which will drive more environmentally friendly technologies. Solutions like anaerobic digestion, in-vessel composting, and advanced thermal treatments are being investigated and demonstrated to improve investors’ confidence.
The Government’s ambitious climate change agenda needs the waste management industry to broaden its horizons and take advantage of these new technologies and new market opportunities. The industry also needs, I suggest, to integrate more closely with the energy sector.
Defra is stimulating the market for Solid Recovered Fuel – or SRF. The Greater Manchester waste management procurement, supported by £100 million of PFI credits, is a good example. The Laing Viridor consortium is seeking to use a variety of Mechanical and Biological Treatment technologies and supply Ineos Chlor in Runcorn with SRF to produce heat and electricity.
Developing this market could have major benefits for the country’s energy-intensive industries – cutting costs and carbon emissions at the same time. Last month the government issued a response to the Renewables Obligation consultation. This included proposals directly related to waste and energy activity, namely:
- the deeming and the determination of biomass content;
- neutrality for waste; and significantly
- the treatment of efficiency levels for combined heat and power.
These will now be taken forward in legislation.
So, while more needs to be done and there is a long way to go, we believe that there are good prospects that sufficient infrastructure can be delivered to meet our obligations under the Landfill Directive.
So in conclusion we face some big challenges both in the near and long term future.
To meet those challenges I believe economic and environmental needs do not have to be compromised, but we will have to be smarter, more ambitious and more imaginative to achieve more with less.
I hope very much that you are going to take the opportunity to explore the issues in more depth in this afternoon’s workshops, and one of my officials from the Department will be here to help you do that. And I look forward to seeing the outcome of these discussions on the Government Office webpage.
All of us have a role to play in addressing the challenge of climate change and the sustainable use of resources, and I’m grateful for the contribution being made here in the North West.
Thank you.
Page published: 04 February 2008