Waste Working Group: Terms of Reference

Sustainable waste management is an increasingly complex and challenging area for local government, businesses, households and government alike. Landfill sites are under pressure and disposing to landfill is increasingly costly as a result, incineration remains controversial and recycling levels remain low despite being commonly assumed to be the best environmental option.

But when it comes to waste, we can all do our bit. We can all consider the amount of packaging around goods and avoid producing unnecessary waste, and of course we can all recycle. Presently 81% of our waste currently goes to landfill and is buried in holes in the ground. Only 11% is recycled and 8% is incinerated with energy recovery.

Sustainable waste management is our goal and our ambition. Much of the traditional discussion of waste centres around household domestic waste and the recycling undertaken by Councils, but we will be looking at all wastes – household, industrial, commercial, agricultural – and bringing together the opportunities for recycling and better resource and material management in the supply chain.

Every piece of waste that is recycled has a potential benefit to our environment and our economy. However, recycling must be driven by the opportunities to deliver secondary raw materials to manufacturers and to industry. This is well–established practice in the fields of metals recycling and newsprint and to a lesser extent glass. But perhaps the best example is composting our own green waste. Despite this 50% of our landfill waste could still be recycled or composted.

We must support innovations on green packaging made from environmental friendly sources to ensure that the environmental impact is minimised along with the amount of packaging actually required. We will also be looking at the economics of recycling and identifying if there are new mechanisms that can support more innovative ways to recycle our wastes.

We will look at treatment options – because all wastes, whether from a factory, shop, farm or household, which cannot usefully be recycled, must be disposed of. And again the critical test for us will be the overall environmental impact of the totality of the process. That includes collection, transport, energy used in the process, energy generated by the process, emissions, and residues. There are no easy answers and when we formulate policy it will be based on sound science and a sound evaluation of overall environmental impact.

We will also be considering how to ‘Design waste out of the system’. Zero Waste is an ‘end of pipe’ strategy but above all it is a design principle. We must start the debate of how we can design waste out of the system if we are to achieve improvements in waste management. We must create the strategies which will enable the supply chain to be radically changed so that each person is playing their part in creating closed looped, resource efficient waste management systems. The group will also look at waste reduction, and how the UK can decouple waste growth from growth in GDP.

It is clear that a complex blend of measures will be needed to achieve true waste reduction, both via the household waste stream and the industrial/commercial streams. These will include intelligent application of the packaging regulations, more public education and awareness, and a better understanding of how different materials flow through the manufacturer-to-consumer process. We will also need to consider how wastes management is paid for and whether a change in the household waste funding structure is needed.

The Group will look at re-use, particularly of containers and packaging, and will also research obsolescence and what is being done by manufacturers to improve the capacity of goods to be repaired, or to be made in a way that makes them more easily and safely recyclable. We will examine the changes made by motor manufacturers following the advent of the ELV directive, and consider whether there are lessons here for other manufacturers of consumer products which use complex materials.

The fourth plank of our work will be to look at household domestic waste, which is the most public-facing sector of the waste industry. Bearing in mind that collection and disposal systems are the province of Local Authorities which are autonomous, we will look at best practice within the UK and beyond and consider what levers and incentives are needed to encourage all Local Authorities to perform to the highest standards. We will also consider in depth how Local Authority recycling systems can match the aspirations of householders, and what changes are needed in the planning system to facilitate siting of waste management and recycling capacity.

Sustainable waste management is fundamental in the Conservative Party’s drive towards more environmentally friendly practices. It is not peripheral to the climate change debate – it is one of the key issues, along with transport, and energy to help enhance the Quality of life in Britain - where we have a duty to make whatever changes are necessary in order to protect and enhance the environment in balance with our economy, society and wellbeing. Future generations will not forgive us if we fail to address these issues with determination and vision.