"Climate Change means that each of us needs to look at what we currently do and think hard about what more we could do both inside and outside the home. This includes working together to reduce the amount of waste we generate. Our plan for incentives for waste fits into this"
Joan Ruddock, The Minister for Climate Change, Biodiversity, and Waste
London: Minister for Waste, Joan Ruddock has announced that up to five local authorities will be allowed to pilot incentive schemes for recycling.
The Government will be making £1.5m available annually for the next three years to finance the recycling pilot studies.
The announcement - in a written ministerial statement to the Parliament today - follows the publishing of the Climate Change Bill, under which the pilot schemes will be permitted (see MoreThanWaste article).
Council will be able to submit schemes to suit their own local conditions, though they will need to be consistent with the legislative framework.
The UK is currently the only EU15 country that prevents authorities from trialling or putting in place these type of recycling incentives schemes. Our neighbour Ireland, for example, has successfully implemented a waste charging scheme.
The effects of the pilot incentive schemes will be monitored to determine whether they have been sufficiently successful to justify rolling them out more widely. Results would need to be reported back to Parliament before a decision could be taken to adopt any wider usage of incentive schemes.
Such incentive schemes were recently backed by the Local Government Association (LGA) – which represents English local authorities including waste collection and waste disposal authorities. The LGA said that the powers should help to encourage people to take more responsibility for the way they throw their rubbish away.
Joan Ruddock, Minister for Climate Change, Biodiversity and Waste
The legislative framework
The legislative framework requires that if a local authority collects any revenue through a scheme, this must be returned to residents so that as a whole, they will not be paying more. Authorities will be able to pay back rebates, and collect any payments, through Council Tax, if they want.
The Minister says that pilots could only be introduced where there was a good kerbside recycling service in place. Authorities will also have to take into account the effects on potentially disadvantaged groups such as for young families.
Flytipping is a further issue for a local authority to consider and their policies will need to be reviewed and a flytipping prevention strategy will also need to be in place.
Ms Ruddock says that:
“Evidence from other countries where financial incentives schemes operate suggests that an increase in fly tipping is not an automatic consequence of introducing them, but having a strategy in place is good common sense”.
The Government will have the ability under reserved powers, to create a cap in the future on the level of incentive, as households would be protected from too high a level being set.
Elsewhere in her written statement, Joan Ruddock said:
“Business has also been increasing its effort to reduce the amount of packaging it puts around the products that we buy. Last month we announced proposals for increased targets for recovery and recycling of packaging for 2008-12. In 2012 we now hope overall to see producers recycling and recovering 66% of all paper and 65% of all glass packaging.
“But we need to do more. Methane emissions from biodegradable waste in landfill count for about 3% of UK greenhouse gas emissions. We still lag behind much of mainland Europe in recycling and we will face EU fines if we exceed landfill limits.”
Further information
For further information on the pilot waste incentive schemes proposals visit the Defra website.