The trade body for environmental industries has today called for a national debate on setting ambitious but realistic recycling targets for 2025 to provide a framework for the resources sector post-Brexit.
The call comes in a briefing paper published by the Environmental Industries Commission (EIC) titled Brexit: Implications for the Waste and Resources Sector.
EIC executive director Matthew Farrow said: “The complex layers of EU waste law established over 40 years have transformed waste management and recycling in the UK, helping us get from bottom of the league to mid-table. Post-Brexit the government must resist making significant changes to regulations as this will undermine what has been achieved.
“But there are areas where new thinking is required. It is not clear that the UK will meet the EU 2020 50% recycling target and the Commission will no longer be able to sanction the UK for not achieving it.”
Farrow said that while the EU is considering a one-size-fits-all target for the remaining EU countries for 2030, the UK should consider setting a 2025 target that is ambitious but realistic in a UK context.
“Such a target, if set with industry and cross-party support, would provide an investment framework for the industry to drive UK progress towards a circular economy,” he said.
Other recommendations made in the report include:
- Copy EU Eco-design regulations that emerge from the Circular Economy package;
- Incorporate circular economy approaches in the sector plans to be developed under the new Industrial Strategy;
- Review the Separate Collection provisions of the revised Waste Framework Directive to ensure a pragmatic approach;
- Encourage regulatory commonality between the devolved nations even while targets and initiatives may diverge.
The report was drafted with support from law firm B P Collins LLP.
Overall impact of EU Waste legislation
In 1975, 90% of UK waste was landfilled. Northern Europe, however, had a stronger culture of recycling and incineration with electricity and heat recovery linked to district heating rather than landfill, and EU waste policy encouraged development in this direction.
The overall impact of four decades of EU waste policy on the UK could be summarised as:
- A depoliticisation of waste policy: Until the early 2010s, there was a cross-party consensus on the drive to move away from landfill and boost recycling. However, this focus on broad compliance with the specific targets in the Directives was arguably a factor behind the lack of an overarching government agenda for managing waste as a resource across the whole supply chain.
- Reduced landfilling: The Landfill Directive set absolute targets for sharply cutting volumes of waste sent to landfill. To meet these targets, successive governments introduced the Landfill Tax, Landfill Tax escalator and the LATS trading scheme to drive up the price of landfilling.
- Recycling up from 10% to 40%: Faced with meeting challenging recycling targets from a low base and the impact of the landfill tax on local authority budgets, successive initiatives to encourage public participation in recycling were introduced, leading to a culture change.
- Renaissance of Energy from Waste (EfW): Recycling could not increase quickly enough to meet the landfill diversion targets by itself, so a shift from landfilling to energy from waste plants also took place. Without an existing culture of EfW, some EfW proposals proved controversial among local communities. In addition, EU regulations allowing cross-border trade in treated waste, created a North European market in Refuse Derived Fuel (RDF).
- Growth of “circular economy” concept: while not purely an EU concept, the EU has encouraged eco-design and waste prevention concepts and has made proposals for circular economy approaches.
