24 October 2008

CSS COMMENTS ON REVISED EU WASTE FRAMEWORK

CSS recognises that increasingly waste must be treated as a resource, with much greater investment in new technologies to ensure that disposal of waste to landfill is minimised.  

We welcome the target in the Waste Framework Directive, requiring 50 per cent of municipal waste to be recycled by 2020, but acknowledge that this will present a major challenge for the UK as currently only a minority of councils with waste disposal responsibilities expect to be able to achieve this (1).

The average recycling and composting rate for all authorities in 2006/7 was 31 per cent, with the top performing waste collection authorities already exceeding 50 per cent. CSS members have been working to meet the challenging targets set by Government under the Landfill Directive for several years in order to minimise waste disposal to landfill. And we expect to see some of CSS’s top performing member authorities representing waste disposal authorities breaking the 50 per cent barrier for the first time in 2007/8 when new leagues tables are published by Defra in November. 

However, significant investment is also needed to meet these challenging targets. CSS will continue to lobby Government for more financial support for local authorities. This is needed both to help deliver the infrastructure and also to increase the resources available to support waste services budgets in the face of the escalating costs such as the Government's own landfill tax (which is set to rise by £8 per tonne per year from its current £32 until it reaches £48 per tonne in 2010, with possible further increases).

CSS has long highlighted that municipal waste only makes up 10 per cent of waste arisings, with more than 80 per cent coming from construction and demolition, and commercial and industrial waste streams.  CSS is therefore delighted that the directive sets a target of re-using and recycling at least 70 per cent of non-hazardous constriction and demolition waste by 2020.

Overall, the UK should be well on the way to delivering a solution to meeting the recycling challenge.

(1) "Well Disposed - Responding to the Waste Challenge”, Audit Commission Report, 25 Sept 2008

Julia Barrett

Chairman, CSS Waste Panel

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Media contact  

Susan Tolman, Daybreak Communications office 0845 644 3845; mobile 07786 543430; susan.tolman@daybreakcomm.co.uk 

Notes to editors

• CSS represents senior local authority officers who manage some of the most pressing issues facing the UK today. Membership is drawn from all four corners of the United Kingdom with members responsible for three-quarters of the road network, two thirds of the land area and just under half of the population of England and Wales. Operating at the strategic tier of local government, they are closely involved in crucial transport, waste management, environment, planning, energy and economic development issues.