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Third ESTET National Consensus Conference
Closing the Loop:
Financing and Regulating waste strategy after the PIU
Facing up to the Challenges
Sir John Harman
Chairman, Environment Agency
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for inviting me to speak at this, the third ESTET National Consensus Conference here at The Royal Society. I think that it is important to appreciate that through the application of sound science, such as that advocated by The Royal Society, we will eventually find solutions to many environmental problems we face today - including those associated with waste.
We may now be at a turning point in how we think about the waste that we produce, and that which is produced by others on our behalf - in making the goods or providing the services we so avidly consume. The waste "debate" is now "on". We have a need and an opportunity to ask:
- Which of our wastes can be avoided?
- What do we want done with the waste we produce - to regain materials or value
- How do we want the residues managed?, and
- How much will we have to pay to make this happen - and who will pay it?
The Cabinet Office's Strategy Unit is carrying out a radical assessment of how we manage our waste. The report is still awaited. Without knowing what's in it, I hope it will cover at least three important issues:
- The need to plan for industrial and commercial wastes with the same vigour as household wastes
- The need for general shared responsibility for our waste, how it is managed and who pays
- The need for a mixed tool kit of regulatory and non-regulatory approaches.
Whatever the Strategy Unit report recommends, and I am sure there will be something in it for all of us, we need a change in attitudes towards the use of resources and management of waste if we are to make wiser, more sustainable use of our natural resources.
Industrial and Commercial wastes
Many criticised Waste Strategy 2000 for focusing too much on 28million tonnes of household waste in England and Wales. There are 400 million tonnes of waste in total. True - household waste production marches ever upwards in line with increased living standards, and the Strategy Unit are just as likely to focus on it. It's a waste stream clearly not under control and unless we act it WILL double by 2020. Generally, the amounts of industrial and commercial wastes produced are falling, but hazardous wastes seem curiously resistant to change. In an increasingly risk-averse society more wastes will be classed and managed as "hazardous" - including many materials that we are familiar with or even complacent about. And don't forget - it is the hazardous waste market that will be most immediately affected by restrictions under the Landfill Directive and new producer responsibilities.
The Agency therefore welcomes Government's commitment to set up a Hazardous Waste Forum. This will call together public and private sector understandings of the waste market and check whether Waste Strategy 2000 takes account of the pressures on hazardous wastes. We are about to publish year 2000 hazardous waste data on our website, with 2001 data to follow later in the year. We hope this will help this forum get a quick start - it has important work to do.
The Agency will also build on its expected role under the revised special waste regime to get better contact with hazardous waste producers. If the Agency can help to prevent one tonne of waste, it would choose a hazardous one.
Shared General Responsibility for Waste
For too long it has been too easy for us to pass our responsibilities on to others:
- our councils arrange for our household waste to be taken away - too often to the landfill sites that those who actually produce the waste are protesting against!
- in the course of making and selling the products that we want to buy, industry and commerce produce waste that many in society do not want disposed of, or recovered in any way, any where near where they live.
For every tonne of household rubbish produced by the average household, another tonne is produced from the shops, banks and insurance companies we use; a further two tonnes comes from the industries which make the goods we buy and provide the electricity we use; and three tonnes is produced by the construction industry. In other words, on average, every week of every year we each produce our own body weight in waste - a frightening thought.
In short, we must all face up to our social responsibilities and take more direct responsibility for the waste that we produce and that is produced on our behalf. I am not suggesting that we should put on hair-shirts and return to the dark ages, with fewer consumer goods and less colourful lifestyles. But we should all recognise the impacts our lifestyles have on resource consumption and waste production. We must plan for, and pay for, tackling our waste issues head-on.
If we are to reduce our reliance on landfills, which are usually large and "out of town", we are likely to need more (and more diverse) waste treatments - often closer to where people live or work. This will bring new opportunities for the waste / materials management industries, but will not necessarily be popular - not every one wants a waste recycling, composting or energy from waste plant in their neighbourhood. We therefore need waste management strategies chosen not only on environmental and technical merit, but also on the basis of planning realities. If we are to restore any degree of public confidence in the way we manage our waste, we will need strict control over where we see waste management facilities in the future. The strategies must be realistic though. Zero waste is an admirable long term objective, but you can't just wish waste away.
Community involvement in waste strategy development is no simple matter - ask Hampshire - but it looks increasingly important if plans are ever to be turned into reality. "Nuts and bolts" local strategies involve individual locations and choices of technologies. The relative real and perceived risks to people and the environment become important. Science can help quantify and reduce risk, but not make it zero. It also needs to get better at explaining and helping to weigh different kinds of risk and costs to the people who have to choose between them. The help local authorities need in preparing plans and determining planning applications needs to be addressed by the Strategy Unit. It seems unreasonable to expect individual authorities to have this sort of expertise in-house. Many have suggested the need for some sort of "Strategic Waste Authority". This could be a single body or enhanced roles of a number of pre-existing organisations. Either way this sort of strategic support appears to be vital if we are to make sense of the many and often conflicting priorities for managing waste.
Turning to paying for better solutions: cheap landfill has throttled innovation in waste and materials management in the UK for too long. Landfill disposal in this country is amongst the cheapest in Europe; before the Landfill Tax is added-on, it's often cheaper now than it was 10 years ago. As a society, we should not tolerate landfill that is cheap and yet can still have significant adverse impacts. For the foreseeable future we will need to landfill some wastes - where we do, it should be to the highest practicable standards and if this doubles or even triples the price, so what? Some industrial and commercial wastes are, or will be, banned from landfill or restricted to very specialised sites. Future management costs for these types of waste will inevitably increase. We can also predict a steady increase in producer responsibilities paying for more sustainable end-of-life management for a widening range of products. We must keep away from relying on last-user responsibility - that is a recipe for fly tipping and abandonment. Tougher landfill or disposal taxes will also increase disposal costs. Few of these changes however will affect our waste behaviour at home in the short term.
One measure that would reach householder's waste production would be to charge them directly. In a recent Agency survey 70% of householders said they would sort their rubbish, to allow something better to be done with it, if it was made easy for them. More than half of the respondents thought it would be OK to charge extra for taking away unsorted waste. Fraught with practical problems as it is, it is high time to carry out properly monitored studies in some local authorities to assess different methods of making householders aware of what their waste costs them and incentivising recycling and reduction. We need positive action to shift the UK recycling rate for household waste to something more like the 48% achieved in Germany .
Regulation
I would like to see a balance between regulatory and non-regulatory approaches to businesses, householders and, of course, the public sector, to reduce the amount of waste that they produce and increase the amount of reclaimed and recycled goods that they use.
The Agency wants to regulate industry in a way that will protect the environment and ensure that we keep out the criminal element - keeping a level playing field that does not distort competition. This does not mean that we will produce identical licences for all sites and inspect them the same number of times each year. Quite the contrary, we will continue to develop and use risk-based regulation that will allow us to target our limited resources to where we think the environmental gain will be greatest. This will mean site-specific decisions within a nationally developed framework. I must also make a plea for adequate, on-going funding for the regulation of waste management, especially environmental crime. At the moment it costs less than the price of a hamburger per person per year for the Agency to regulate waste across England and Wales.
We will continue to improve our application of the regulatory tools that we have. For example, we will build on our recent experiences of working with industry to develop our regulatory package for applying the Pollution Prevention and Control regime to landfills . I would like to take this opportunity to thank the waste industry for their hard work and co-operation on the implementation of the landfill directive. And in particular to congratulate the industry for successfully meeting the conditioning plan submission deadline of 16 July 2002. Less than one per cent of landfill sites have failed to send the Environment Agency a conditioning plan and are currently being investigated. We also recognise that we don't always respond as quickly as some would like to their applications for permits. I am optimistic that our organisational changes under project BRITE will help us improve our performance across the board. After all, we need to respond to the increase in the number and diversity of waste management sites required to meet the challenges that we face. We also need to be assured that capacity exists in the strategic and development control planning systems to cope with the same demands.
We will continue to work with our sponsoring Department, DEFRA, to ensure that the environmental outcomes for new regulations are clearly identified and that existing regulatory packages are reviewed to ensure that they are "fit for purpose". To this end, we have agreed with DEFRA and the Secretary of State, to review the waste permitting regimes to make sure that they are fit for purpose and that the benefits from compliance with regulation justifies the associated costs for all parties.
We need to ensure that those who choose to operate outside the law, intent on illegal waste management often at considerable financial gain, are not allowed to get away with it. Working with others , we must effectively tackle environmental crime and ensure that the penalties for illegal operation act as a deterrent to others with illegal intent. To this end we have provided advice and training to the Magistrates, and to the courts, as to the nature of environmental offences and the serious impact that illegal waste management can have on the environment.
So, we can see that there are many challenges en route to delivering the Waste Strategy targets of more sustainable waste management. Challenges that we must all face up to and do our part to overcome. Sustainable waste management should be something that our society respects us for achieving not something that it refuses to accept on its doorstep. To achieve the level of trust needed, we, the Agency, need to be seen to regulate firmly, but fairly, and with clear environmental objectives in mind. Industry must reduce, re-use, reclaim and recycle. Householders must be given the opportunity to do the same. The waste management industry - with its experience, expertise and professionalism - is well placed to help us meet these challenges head on. And we all must be prepared to pay the price of sustainable waste management.
The Strategy Unit's report will undoubtedly cover some of these issues, and I look forward to its publication shortly. Government leadership is vital in such an issue that touches everybody and has such potential long term consequences. In the meanwhile I suspect that many people already know what most of the issues are. The "Waste Debate" is "on" and we've got a relatively short time to make a difference that will last. 
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