Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee
Oral evidence: Waste management, HC 241
Tuesday 8 July 2014
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 8 July 2014
Written evidence from witnesses:
Members present: Miss Anne McIntosh (Chair); Richard Drax; Jim Fitzpatrick; Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck; Sheryll Murray; Neil Parish; Ms Margaret Ritchie; Mr Mark Spencer; Roger Williams
Witnesses: Dan Rogerson MP, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Water, Forestry, Rural Affairs and Resource Management, and Dr Colin Church, Director, Resource, Atmosphere and Sustainability, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, gave evidence.
Q213 Chair: Good afternoon and welcome. Minister, thank you very much for joining us in our inquiry into waste. Just for the record, would you like to introduce yourself and your colleague from the Department?
Dan Rogerson: Certainly. Dan Rogerson, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at Defra.
Dr Church: Dr Colin Church, Director of Resource, Atmosphere and Sustainability at Defra.
Q214 Chair: Thank you. Perhaps you would just set out for us your current waste policy in connection with the waste hierarchy and the Waste Management Plan that you issued at the end of last year.
Dan Rogerson: Yes, certainly. What I would like to emphasise is that it remains an important area of work for Defra. We will perhaps have the opportunity to talk about making progress towards a circular economy; there has been a lot of discussion about that recently and we are continuing a number of areas of work with regard to waste and resource efficiency and resource management.
Like across Government, we have had to be very careful and evaluate the resources we have got. That does mean stepping back on some areas of work where we think a lot of progress has been made and focusing on some other areas where we think Government needs to take the lead. In terms of the circular economy, this is the approach that we very much favour. We have heard recently from Commissioner Potočnik that that is very much the thinking at the European level as well, which we welcome. It is essential that we make best use of the resources that are out there that are available for the economy, for environmental reasons, but also that, in moving away from that approach of the more linear model where you get a resource, you manufacture something and you dispose of it at the end, we make better use, because we think we can keep our economy in this country more competitive if we are far more efficient with how we deal with those resources.
In that, we will work closely with other Departments—with BIS in particular, looking at innovation. We know the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee looked at the bio-economy, and in our response to that we welcomed the fact that BIS had appointed a Minister to take a lead on the business side of that and the opportunities there are for innovation and for the economy. But it is very much important within Defra that we maintain our focus on resource efficiency. As I say, it remains a priority for us and there are a number of areas of work that we are carrying out, a lot of them through WRAP, as our partner delivery body, on offering advice and taking forward policy development, but in house as well. Hopefully we will have the opportunity to explore that a little bit more with you this afternoon.
Q215 Chair: Is “zero waste” the target?
Dan Rogerson: The target for us is moving to this more circular approach with resources. It is moving away from focusing on the concept of waste to one of resources. We are moving towards a circular economy rather than achieving it, because there are some materials that you would be spending more resources chasing after than you would be achieving back in return. There are limits to the approach, but that circular mindset and circular thinking is the approach we would like to see. As I say, other Departments across Government are increasingly looking at how they can respond to that way of working as well.
Q216 Chair: Do you think we are losing out if we do not recognise waste as a resource in economic terms?
Dan Rogerson: Absolutely, Madam Chairman; you are quite right there. While we can get more and more efficient in terms of the people we have and the skills that we have in our economy, there are perhaps other economies around the world that will have cheaper labour costs than us. We try to maintain competitiveness right the way across, as I am sure Government will work with industry to do, but there is a key area for us in resources. If we can be much more efficient with the way we manage resources, then that will keep us competitive. It also offers an opportunity for innovation and development of new technologies and new businesses, where hopefully we can get ahead of other economies and, together with our partners in UKTI and across BIS, perhaps look for export markets for products but also expertise.
Q217 Chair: In a circular, Minister, that you sent to partners in April this year, you announced that Defra will “step back” in areas where businesses are better placed to act and there is no clear market failure. If it did appear that there was anything approaching a market failure, what action would Defra take in those circumstances?
Dan Rogerson: We are continuing work in a number of areas around resource policy. I can give you some examples of the sorts of work that we are doing. We are continuing to review and set challenging packaging targets to make sure that we make the best of the resources that are there. We are looking to improve the quality of recyclates through the effective implementation of the regulations that we have introduced on materials recovery facilities. We are taking forward a programme of work following the publication of the Waste Prevention Programme for England, which we published back in December. We are driving forward voluntary approaches to reduce food and packaging waste in the grocery sector. Where there are issues that we think we need to be in there working on with partners in industry, in civil society and across the public sector, we are there carrying out that work, but in a lot of areas we are getting the response from business, for example, that they will take things forward because they see the benefits not just in environmental and corporate social responsibility terms, but also in economic terms; if they are wasting less, then they are far more efficient and they are more competitive.
Q218 Chair: Could you just answer the question that I put? It is good you are telling the Committee the work that the Department is doing—that is very relevant—but if it emerged there was a potential market failure, what would the Government do in those circumstances?
Dan Rogerson: I suppose it depends in which respect we are talking. I was attempting to set out the issues to do with packaging. We have looked, together with the Environment Agency, at the way that the packaging regulations work to do with export and making sure that what is being exported is not contaminated so they are not exporting materials and claiming packaging export recovery notes for things that are not up to scratch, as it were. If there are issues where industry and others have asked us to step in, then we will look at doing that.
Dr Church: There is another example, if you like. The recycling targets that we set for plastic packaging are higher than those currently mandated by the European Union. We did that because it seemed to us that there were economic and environmental benefits that were not otherwise being realised because of problems with the existing targets. We went further than required by the EU in order to realise those benefits. That is an example where we have done that kind of thing.
Dan Rogerson: If there are gaps where there are those who are interested in pursuing technologies or in capturing energy from waste, for example—maybe anaerobic digestion—there are things that we can do to help. With the AD Loan Fund that is out there to help, we have got farmers coming forward who are looking at ways they can take advantage of that technology. If there are ways in which we think it would not happen without a bit of assistance, then we can help out.
Q219 Mrs Lewell-Buck: The Minister has probably already answered this, but could you, just for my clarification, give me some examples of what Defra would class as market failure?
Dan Rogerson: As Dr Church has said there, there are opportunities sometimes to give things a little push in a direction where we think there is a market for materials but, for whatever reason, it is not quite being achieved. Sometimes that is a barrier; it could be something that we would need to look at through regulation. If there is a problem with a new product that could come to market that could help but those who are developing the product are having a problem getting it to that development stage and rolling it out, there are a number of schemes that we take forward, and that BIS take forward as well, to help bridge that gap in bringing technologies to market. There are a number of ways we can do that.
Q220 Mrs Lewell-Buck: Would it be Defra that was watching out for the market failure, or would it be another Department? Who is going to keep track?
Dan Rogerson: We would be the main point of contact. We look at those issues and we re-assess. For example, on packaging targets, there have been changes with glass, where, in consultation with the sector, who felt that the targets were not quite right, we have re‑examined the evidence base and altered those targets. It is a two-way communication with those who are seeking to make best use of those resources and when they are looking for the people to talk to in Government, they will be in Defra.
Q221 Chair: The difficulty is, Minister, that there is an over-capacity and in those circumstances the prices are coming down and the volumes are down, so there is no commercial gain. In a way, the Government is stepping back, leaving the commercial sector to take over, but where the volumes are down and the prices are down and they are not making any money, the waste is not going to go anywhere.
Dan Rogerson: When you say volumes are down, if there is a shortage of materials, the price—
Chair: Domestic waste is down 10% to 12%.
Dan Rogerson: You mentioned the hierarchy earlier on. That is very much where we are. We want to prevent waste in the first place. If we can have more efficient use of materials that are in there and we can prevent the waste of the energy and the other things that go into creating a product that is not used in the way it is intended, then that is what we want to do. There are other things that can be re-used and then we come to recycling. In a sense, if there are fewer waste arisings, that represents, perhaps, the economy becoming more efficient at a higher level up that hierarchy.
Q222 Chair: The Committee would just like an undertaking that you will keep this under review and, if it is the case that new contracts coming online take a year or two to come into effect, you will keep a close eye in the Department that the 2020 target will not be missed.
Dan Rogerson: Okay. If you are talking about aspects of waste infrastructure, we do keep that under review. If there is ever any level of support, whether it is through PFI or whatever, that we are offering for infrastructure out there—whether that is energy from waste or all those sorts of things—then yes, we do look at what the national picture is with regard to capacity when we take decisions. Clearly, a number of those contracts have already been entered into, but if there are opportunities where, for whatever reason, the contract is not being delivered as was originally signed then it does give the opportunity, as part of a review across the country, to see what infrastructure we need and some changes do occasionally result from that.
Q223 Chair: If it was put to you that perhaps we do not challenge the targets as they are being set in draft EU legislation, how would you respond to the vigour with which these are challenged by the Department at both official and ministerial level?
Dan Rogerson: We challenge them very strongly. Defra is very much engaged in all those debates at the European Union level—quite rightly—and if the approach comes forward, as it may, from the communication last week on future targets and more exacting measures, we would want to see the evidence base for those and to make sure these things are achievable. There are a number of jurisdictions in the European Union that would not be performing as well as we, or some of the highest-performing countries, are, and therefore we need to be realistic about those targets and achieving the ones that are set out already before we start imposing others. We do very much listen strongly to arguments, whether that be in industry or in any of the other partners we work with—the NGOs and civil society as well—to make sure that these things are achievable and we use that evidence base in our discussions and our negotiations at the European level.
Q224 Chair: Could you just describe your relationship with the Department for Communities and Local Government, the Department of Energy and Climate Change and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, particularly with regard to how you liaise and co-ordinate Government policy with these Departments on waste?
Dan Rogerson: I suppose the change in definition that we have already discussed, madam Chairman, from “waste” to “resource” has changed the nature of some of those discussions. The opportunities for innovation and for making industry more efficient mean we have close discussions with BIS. I have mentioned, for example, the appointment of a Minister in BIS looking at the bio-economy and what they might be able to do with the products that come out of the resource chain, which we are very much working with in Defra. Discussions with DCLG will focus on the statutory collection side of what some of those resources are in a municipal context, and we are clearly in discussion with them on how we can continue to make progress towards the household target that we have.
You mentioned also DECC. We work with them because a number of the technologies are around energy recovery; they will want to see opportunities for generating energy locally and adding to the grid and we will want to see opportunities to, again, bring the hierarchy into play. If there is energy recovery, that is good, but there are perhaps other uses higher up the hierarchy for those materials before we come to energy recovery. We discuss the policy instruments that all Departments have to try to co-ordinate those.
Q225 Chair: Your decision to step back from waste policy in April this year—
Dan Rogerson: It is really important to get once again on the record that we are not stepping back from waste policy. What we have done is look at some areas of waste policy where we have done a great deal of work with WRAP and in house, and there are other areas of policy where we still think further work needs to go on. We are certainly not stepping back from it altogether. This is an area of policy I have been interested in for a very long time as a member of this Committee before and in a number of other capacities as a Member of the House, and so as Minister I am very keen that we continue to do even better and work towards a circular economy. I have some very good officials who are keen to take those opportunities and to make sure that within that European context we are talking about we are ahead of a number of other countries. That will take a continuing amount of work. Clearly, given the overall picture on Government spending, we have challenges there, so we do have to restrict and very much focus the investment we make on particular parts of that waste policy—or resource policy, I should probably say.
Q226 Jim Fitzpatrick: Minister and Dr Church, good afternoon. I know the Chair is very keen, as I and other members of the Committee are, to come on to the question of fires later on in the session, but just in terms of the liaison with DCLG, as the parent Department for the fire service, have they approached you about any concerns about waste fires and regulation from the Environment Agency? Alternatively, have you raised with them the issue? It has certainly been circulated to the All-Party Parliamentary Fire Safety and Rescue Group, and the Committee has seen papers from the Chief Fire Officers Association expressing concern. I just wondered if they had raised this formally yet, or if it has not reached that level yet.
Dan Rogerson: I have not had it raised formally with me.
Dr Church: Both ourselves and the Environment Agency work directly with the fire service organisations to explore this, so in a way DCLG has not needed to get involved because we have had a very good relationship with the fire services about these problems. We have been working with them to develop guidance both for them to use and for the Environment Agency to use, and we are looking at whether there are further regulatory changes necessary.
Jim Fitzpatrick: Thank you, Chair. I am sure we will come back to it, but I just wanted to clear up the DCLG angle.
Q227 Mrs Lewell-Buck: Witnesses have suggested that Defra’s withdrawal from the market is “premature” and “dangerous”. I was just wondering if the Minister agrees with those comments and if there was any consultation with industry and stakeholders before the decision was made.
Dan Rogerson: If we were to withdraw from waste and resource management policy altogether, then that would potentially have implications, but, as I was keen to point out a moment ago, that is not the case. We have not done that.
Q228 Mrs Lewell-Buck: Why is it that the witnesses feel that is the case? If that is not the reality, why have they got that perception and why are they telling this Committee that they are concerned?
Dan Rogerson: That is a question that those witnesses might want to give you more information on—you have already questioned them—but certainly we have been very clear to point out the areas of work that we are continuing with: the Waste Prevention Programme for England is one of those that I have mentioned; looking at work around markets for materials; and so on. There is a whole range of stuff that we are doing. I have been keen to engage with the sector. I spoke recently at the joint conference of the Chartered Institute of Wastes Management and the Environmental Services Association, setting out some of the things that we are doing and where we want to hear from them and work with them. Tomorrow I am talking to the Resource Association, which represents the processing of the recyclate and the re-use of it. I am very much out there discussing. I am disappointed if that is what they feel.
Whichever Department you had a Minister here from and whichever Select Committee this were, if there are pressures on public spending and they are having to take decisions about where they focus that money, you will always get a characterisation of that debate, sometimes at extremes, maybe. There is a limited amount of spending that we have got; that could be characterised as pulling out altogether. It is certainly not. We can demonstrate some figures about where we are spending money and where we are continuing to invest in the sector and work alongside the sector to deliver the outcomes we want to see.
Q229 Neil Parish: Minister, I am intrigued by this business that you want to save money. Quite right too, but if you look at the estimates, you will see that last year’s supplementary estimate for waste funding was £100.4 million and this year it was £108.7 million. I am somewhat intrigued how this is saving money, really.
Dan Rogerson: We have got some information that we have supplied to the Committee, so you have got access to that and we can share it. Dr Church could talk you through, maybe, some of the breakdown. One of the biggest bits of that would be around these waste PFI contracts, which are quite large investments. As I have said, there are opportunities for us to continually re-evaluate the need for all of those. Where projects are moving ahead and they are meeting all the milestones that would not be an issue, but if there are changes to the projects then we would be required in terms of our duty to the taxpayer to re-evaluate that investment and make sure, if the project is changing, that it is still necessary in the form it is changing to.
Dr Church: I was just going to say something about the table of figures. One of the things to be cautious about with the numbers here is that we have undergone a number of restructurings over the period of time, so comparing one year to another is not quite apples and apples. As an example, and as the Minister said, we have been trying to move very consciously from a focus on waste to a focus on resource, which includes but is not limited to waste. Last year, my team, which was then waste and other things, took on the other parts of the resource‑efficiency agenda within Defra and became a properly integrated resource programme. Some of the numbers are going up because of a wider definition rather than necessarily more money in the space. The main driver going across the period is the waste infrastructure numbers, which, as you can see from the table, are going up from £81.2 million in 2011-12, when they first came into Defra’s budget, to about £100 million this year, and are projected to continue to rise for a few more years as more of those projects reach the stage at which we start paying them.
Q230 Neil Parish: I am just looking at the figures on the PFI contracts. I see in 2013-14 it was £91.2 million and in 2014-15 it is £100 million. That accounts for £8.8 million and you have gone up by £8.3 million, which is fine, but it does not show me that you are making many savings.
Dr Church: It is this point that I was trying to make earlier. We have new work and new money to go with that work, and the amount of money I have to do this new work this year is less than I had for my bit of it and my colleague had for his bit of it last year.
Q231 Neil Parish: How is that stepping back from waste management?
Dr Church: It is not because we are not.
Q232 Neil Parish: How is it saving money? If you do not save money in this one, you have got to save money somewhere else.
Dan Rogerson: There are areas of waste policy where things have improved drastically in terms of resource management and so we are not doing that. One of our main partners for developing policy has been, and still is, WRAP and so the amount of resource that we give them has had to reflect that, but we are still making a significant investment. I think it is about £18 million.
Dr Church: Yes, this year.
Dan Rogerson: It is about £18 million this year, and that will be focused on some particular bits of work we are doing. If overall public spending were to rise again and we were to get a bigger section of that, then there might be some other areas of work that we could look at, but the important thing is with the budget that we have been given, given the need to tackle the deficit, we are prioritising the work that we do. As Dr Church has said, there are some bits that would have sat elsewhere in the Department that have come into this section as we have moved to a slightly different approach. There are areas of work where we have made progress and we are going to have draw back from those, but certainly we are not drawing back from the totality, because there is a lot of work that is going on.
Q233 Neil Parish: Is the ethos of Defra to hand more of this over to the private sector or is it the ethos of Defra to pile more Government money into it? That is what I want to know.
Dan Rogerson: The ethos would be that we can do so much, but in terms of delivery it has to be up to society—the private sector but also social enterprise, civil society and other arms of the public sector—in terms of how they manage the resources that go through the processes they are in charge of. If we can be more efficient then we want to see them. We can offer advice; we can work on the evidence base; if changes need to happen in regulatory or legislative terms then that is something we have to do because that is our Department’s role. But it is not as simple as having a button, we press it and it happens across society; it is something that everybody needs to be involved in doing, as is the case in behaviour changes across a number of other areas.
Q234 Neil Parish: I look forward to seeing what happens in 2015-16. The other part of my question is: what are the main programmes that the Department’s £108 million waste budget is spent on? Are you putting more money into Keep Britain Tidy and things like that or are you taking money out? You have got more money in your overall estimate.
Dan Rogerson: If I could talk to some of the figures that we have here, you mentioned in particular one partner organisation there that we have had to draw back from giving money to, but we still discuss things with them and they are still working, in this financial year, on some important projects for us, like the local environmental quality.
Q235 Neil Parish: Why do you not cut back more on administration and give a bit more to Keep Britain Tidy? I am not absolutely convinced that we are spending the money on the right things.
Dan Rogerson: To be honest, we do not do a huge amount that is what I would call administration; we do policy development—we do the legislative stuff.
Neil Parish: There is still some £91 million or something, is there not? No; what am I looking at here? No; it is £3.8 million.
Dan Rogerson: We do the legislative work. We do policy development on the areas of policy where we are changing towards this circular economy, as we have been talking about. We have still got work with the Environment Agency on regulation. We are going to come on to talk about waste fires later on. It is important that we tackle waste crime, because if we bear down on that, that means the legitimate industry is getting the resources it should from business and the wider society. That is good for the Treasury and it is good for those legitimate businesses out there as well. There are pieces of work that we need to be doing.
Q236 Neil Parish: You talked about social enterprises and the like. How are you engaging more with them?
Dr Church: One of the things that we have put some more money into over two years as part of the Waste Prevention Programme is an £800,000 fund for waste prevention activities. We opened that up to bids. We hope and expect that will get partnership bids that involve social enterprises and civil society groups, because a lot of the work that they do around re‑use is slap bang in that kind of space and there is a lot of really good work that is both environmentally and socially beneficial that we would hope to come forward and be able to support through that. That is one example.
Q237 Chair: Can I just ask about the plastic bag legislation? Will you or will you not need primary legislation?
Dan Rogerson: No; it is secondary legislation for that. It is regulation.
Chair: It is in the Environment and Local—what was it?
Dan Rogerson: It is under the Climate Change Act.
Q238 Chair: When are you expecting to introduce that secondary legislation?
Dan Rogerson: In the autumn we should be moving towards bringing forward the regulations on that, and then it will be introduced in autumn 2015. That is the target.
Dr Church: Yes, to come into force in October 2015, but the legislation will be laid before the end of this calendar year.
Q239 Chair: What will the money be used for that is raised from plastic bags?
Dan Rogerson: It is not a tax, so it does not come into Government; it is a levy that we are saying must be charged, but we are very clear that our expectation is that that should be used to support good projects locally. Some of those could be environmental, but they do not have to be environmentally focused projects.
Q240 Chair: You mentioned, Minister, the PFI contracts. In 2010, the Chancellor of the Exchequer confirmed that the North Yorkshire PFI scheme would proceed. Three years later, in 2013, the credits were pulled, leaving a potential charge of millions of pounds to the North Yorkshire taxpayer. I just wonder what the basis of that decision was.
Dan Rogerson: There have been one or two places, as I said earlier, where if the project is not proceeding according to the agreed timetable and whoever the partners are that are taking that forward do not hit their deadlines, at that point it is up for discussion as to whether that still meets the national need that there is. Because of our duty to the taxpayer, we then need to look at those capacity issues you were quite rightly raising earlier on across the country to check what the capacity is that we need in the future and then make judgments accordingly about whether that is a good investment on behalf of the taxpayer or not.
Q241 Chair: But it is probably not a good decision for the North Yorkshire taxpayer.
Dan Rogerson: As I say, that only arises if a project is not being taken forward according to the agreed time scale and so on.
Dr Church: The North Yorkshire one was a project that had not reached financial close; they had not signed the contract with their contractor.
Chair: I think they had by the time it was pulled. It is a potential hit of £6 million, I understand.
Dr Church: There was an agreement in principle—a provisional offer of funding from Government. As part of looking at the fiscal position, we did a review of whether we needed the projects that had not yet reached financial close. That was one; there were two others. The modelling showed that we would not need that project and the other two in order to meet the EU targets and so we withdrew the provisional offer of credits. That happened before the three of them reached financial close.
Q242 Chair: So you do accept it is a big hit for the North Yorkshire taxpayer, which was avoidable.
Dr Church: To be honest, I do not know the details off the top of my head of the contract and the process, but if they had not reached financial close then there should not have been any compensation deals between them. If they negotiated something of that nature between themselves and the contractor, that is up to the council.
Dan Rogerson: The onus on Defra and also on the Treasury is to look at making sure that we are investing significant national resources in something that is meeting that national need. As you were setting out earlier on, there is the possibility of over-capacity in these things and we need to be careful. If we are being more successful at diverting resources elsewhere, do we need as much energy-from-waste capacity? These are the difficult judgments that have to be made, but important ones nevertheless.
Q243 Chair: It would just be helpful to have a note on the three that were pulled. It was Liverpool—
Dr Church: Merseyside, Bradford and Calderdale, and North Yorkshire and York City were the three at that point.
Chair: Yes. Just a background would be very helpful.
Dr Church: Yes, I am very happy to do that.
Q244 Ms Ritchie: Minister, you are very welcome. The EU Waste Framework Directive states that the UK must recycle at least 50% of household waste by 2020. In the light of that, what action is Defra taking to ensure that recycling rates in England increase to 50% by 2020?
Dan Rogerson: I suppose the starting point is we have made a huge amount of progress towards that target. We are over the 40% threshold, but, as you point out, we have got some distance to go to get to 50%. There are a number of reasons why we could have barriers in the way of that. We have to look at the fractions that are left that could more easily be recycled. In some places, for example, food waste is dealt with separately, and that is a potential area of good work; some local authorities have opted to do that.
The issue for us is that a lot of these decisions will be taken at the local level. Local authorities know their local communities, which systems work best and which approaches work best, and so we are not seeking to dictate from the centre, but we are very much wanting to work with, for example, the Local Government Association on behalf of local councils to spread best practice and to work, again, through all the information and the evidence base that WRAP have as well to show what works well so that we can continue to make progress towards the target. Of the four jurisdictions within the United Kingdom, England, for which Defra is responsible, is behind Wales but is ahead of where Scotland and Northern Ireland are. They are making progress, but we are all going to need to close that final gap towards the 50%.
Q245 Ms Ritchie: As a follow-up to that, will England need to rely on devolved Administrations’ recycling rates to push up the overall UK target?
Dan Rogerson: As I say, at the moment England is ahead of two of those jurisdictions, so if we tried to rely on that, it would not work at the moment. If what is behind your question is: do we need to stay focused on this and make sure that we continue to make progress? Yes we do. The way in which we do that is to continue to look at which local authorities are doing well and to continue to spread that best practice, although we do acknowledge, as I say, that different solutions will work better in different areas and so there is that interplay of the local and where we want to get to with our national targets.
Q246 Ms Ritchie: Is there a risk that changes to waste regulations requiring separate collections for paper, metal, plastic and glass will drive recorded recycling rates in England backwards?
Dan Rogerson: Wherever there is a change in the collection system, you will often find that householders who are having to deal with that system will find it difficult at first, but there are lots of examples where more separate collection has worked very well and also improved the quality of the recyclate that comes through. If you do that, there is less of it that has to be thrown away because it is contaminated by another product or so on. In other cases, where some materials are collected together, there is less of a thought process, if you like, it has to go through; the stuff all goes in that bag and it is dealt with. There is an issue around glass with contamination because glass breaks and that can contaminate other things. It is different for different materials.
What I would come back to is that what we want to do is discuss with local authorities where we want to get to and not necessarily require them to do it in a particular system. We are talking to our colleagues in CLG and also local authorities and WRAP, and others, about how we can perhaps offer support to those authorities that are finding it a bit harder to do in terms of the advice that can be offered.
Q247 Ms Ritchie: What do you think and perceive are the main barriers to increasing the rate of recycling in England, Minister?
Dan Rogerson: There will be different challenges in different areas, again. In some cases, where the population is less stable—particularly in some urban areas, where there is a higher turnover of people—perhaps they are less tuned into what the local recycling systems are and how to make best use of them, so it is about information for householders and consumers to help them have that. In other places, it will be the opportunities when contracts change. Some of these contracts for waste collection and recycling collection are of very long duration and local authorities might aspire to do things even better, but they either have to look at a point where there is a break in that contract where they can discuss it with the commercial operator who is doing it for them or they have to wait until a new thing comes along. In some cases local authorities are working together and want to align their collection at that point. There are a number of opportunities they have to do it, but the problems that are facing different local authorities will be different in different places. It might be challenges around collection and around engaging with householders and their behaviour, or it might be around the contracts that they are in. I do not know if you want to add anything.
Dr Church: The only one I would add is that there is some evidence that people believe—wrongly—that there is no point in separating material and putting it in the right recycling bin, etc. because it all gets dumped into a landfill in China or whatever. It is quite important that people have greater understanding of what happens to it, and that is one of the reasons that Defra is very supportive of the Resource Association’s End Destinations of Recycling Charter, which is a charter it encourages local authorities to sign up to, so the local authorities find out where their material is going and communicate that to their households so that the households know it is not being dumped in a hole in the ground somewhere but being sorted and recycled appropriately.
Dan Rogerson: In terms of the particular materials that will be crucial to getting there—packaging and food waste—WRAP are continuing to offer guidance and advice in this area. They are also doing some quite intensive one-to-one support with a small number of target authorities, but more broadly they are presenting information about what can work well and how to get there. WRAP aim to engage with 150 local authority representatives in 2014‑15, so there are lots of opportunities for us to help them get to where we want to.
Q248 Sheryll Murray: Following on from your answers there, Minister, could you tell me what your views are on the proposed increases in EU recycling targets?
Dan Rogerson: As did members of the Committee, we had the communication last week about what those aspirations are. There is no reason not to be ambitious about doing even better as we move towards a circular economy. The approach of the coalition Government will be less to focus on targets. We would have to be very much convinced that those targets were achievable and meaningful. We think that concentrating on what works well in places and working with business, the local authorities and all the partners there are out there is the best way to achieve it, rather than necessarily imposing a target, which, as I say, for various reasons might not be achievable. Perhaps it is, but what we will do in our response and going back to the negotiations that Madam Chair was asking about earlier on is to consult and take evidence from people across the country about what they think of those targets so that we can have the evidence base to enter into those negotiations about the future of waste policy across the EU.
Q249 Sheryll Murray: Do you think that the recently proposed EU target of 70% by 2030 is really achievable for England?
Dan Rogerson: We have discussed the challenges that we have to close the gap to 50%. To move on to 70% in a further 10 years would certainly be challenging. That is not to say it is impossible, but it would certainly take a lot of different ways of doing things—different ways of incentivising and pushing that. We would have to look at what might be in place to deliver that. At the moment, I would say that that is quite a challenging target. What I do not want to do either is set a limit on ambition. I do not want to say, “Oh, we could never do it”. That is why setting it as a binding target is a bit of an issue for us.
Q250 Sheryll Murray: Do you think that lessons can be learnt from the Welsh Government policy to ensure that EU targets can be met?
Dan Rogerson: Certainly Wales have made some impressive progress to get above the 50% target. We talk to all the devolved Administrations on a regular basis and we look at the evidence base that is out there. I think it would be fair to say if you look at how many local authorities there are in Wales and how many there are in England, there are a great deal more in England and a very diverse landscape there, and a lot more people to engage with and—not behaviours to change; that sounds a little bit prescriptive, but you know what I mean—a lot more people to communicate with for us to achieve that. Having said that, we celebrate the successes of what has been achieved in Wales and we look forward to getting towards the 50% target as well.
Q251 Richard Drax: I want to move on to the role of business now, Minister, if I may. Will a business-led approach to waste management simply result in a shift towards the cheapest option?
Dan Rogerson: Businesses are focused, clearly, on efficiencies when it comes to their bottom line, but there is a real potential through this circular economy approach to align the environmental outcomes we want to see with what businesses want to see in terms of efficiency. If it makes industry more competitive that we make better use of the resources at our disposal, then that is a good thing. That is why there are a number of projects where we are engaging with business on that. There are approaches we can take that are less about building lots of a product and trying to sell it and are more about people buying a service—new business models, if you like. There are a couple of projects that are being taken forward by the action-based research programme that I can draw to your attention. One is called the REBus Project and it is around things like buggies for children. You buy the use of it and as the age of your child changes or you have a second child, rather than having to sell that and buy a different buggy, you can either get bits to add on to that or have a new piece of kit. You are buying into a service rather than a particular product that you are spending your money on at the beginning. There is a business model there that we think we will work and not just—
Richard Drax: You are buying spare wheels from the dump, are you?
Dan Rogerson: No. This is a slightly more modular approach to things. You can get bits that you fix on, or it might even be something that is then returned and you get from the company the other bit that you need and then that will be used by someone else, rather than something new being manufactured for each customer.
Dr Church: As the father of young children, a kid up to six months old needs to be horizontal and after six months they can sit up. Some buggies do horizontal; some do not, so this is a kind of buggy that does horizontal for the first six months, then you can change it—still part of the same service—for another model that allows the child to sit up. That is the sort of idea; as your demands or requirements change, you are still buying into the service but, rather than buying a piece of kit and then throwing it away or whatever, the piece of kit is going back to the manufacturer and being reconditioned and used for somebody else.
Dan Rogerson: There is another challenge that I think is a fair one, which is that SMEs sometimes do not have the spare capacity in their business to look to change in the way they do things—to do that horizon-scanning, to use a fairly dreadful phrase but you know what I mean, about what the future might bring.
Richard Drax: Looking ahead, you mean.
Dan Rogerson: Absolutely. Thank you, Mr Drax; as always, you have the right phrase at your fingertips. There is a piece of work again being taken forward that involves the EEF, which is a manufacturers’ organisation, Bangor University, Rolls-Royce and a lot of SMEs along their supply chain to help use the capacity that Rolls-Royce and the university have to support those SMEs about what they can do on resource efficiency. By working collectively and investing in it together, they can make sure that they are making their businesses more resource efficient rather than it all just happening at the Rolls-Royce end, where they have got the capacity, and the SMEs having problems.
Q252 Richard Drax: You have mentioned a few ideas, which all sound potential opportunities, but what direction is the Government itself giving to these businesses? Are you out there in your van saying, “Look, we have got some brilliant ideas; come to us”? Are you talking with these businesses? Are you promoting it or advertising it? How are you helping?
Dan Rogerson: WRAP does a lot of this work with us—
Dr Church: And we are funding those two projects.
Dan Rogerson: We fund those projects, as examples. That is helping construct the evidence base that we can show through engagement. We have mentioned that the EEF, who are the manufacturers’ organisation, are involved in that as well; they, through their networks, can help disseminate what is learned and what is gained from these processes. With another hat on, as you know, Mr Drax, I am also Minister for Flooding, and when we have been talking about lessons learned from flooding, it is important, for example, to engage with the FSB in those discussions about what is happening. Similar things arise: in all these business organisations, if they can see successes then they are keen to help spread that amongst their colleagues. That is what we can do. Yes, it does take a bit of Government to provide the evidence, do the research and help to start disseminating that, but we do need business then to respond to that and look at the opportunities for them. We have regular—
Q253 Richard Drax: Are there any financial incentives, for example?
Dan Rogerson: The biggest financial incentive is it will save them money if they do it. As constituency MPs, we have all visited factories; we know those factories have had a bit of advice on how they can do things more efficiently, whether it is with water or energy. We have to look at resource efficiency in exactly the same way. Energy has been up there for some time because energy costs have been quite high, but increasingly people look at resources in the same way. If I look at print firms in my constituency, they will recycle the metal from the plates they use to print things, whereas years ago some of that would have been disposed of. A lot of the models and the ways in which they do things have changed to be more resource efficient, but there is a long way we can go. We think there may be up to £23 billion of no and low-cost financial resource efficiency improvements. That includes water and energy, but it is an example of how, if we are more resource efficient, we can get our industry more competitive.
Q254 Jim Fitzpatrick: Gentlemen, can we turn to the role of households? Do you think the average householder is sufficiently well informed to help improve recycling rates?
Dan Rogerson: They are increasingly well informed. Colin mentioned earlier on the negative messages that sometimes you get—that “Oh, well it all ends up in landfill; it is all just shipped over and ends up in a big tip somewhere in the developing world”. Part of our bit is to make sure that that is not true and to continue to tackle things like waste crime and to look at all those issues so that we can demonstrate that we are making a difference when we do recycle and re-use. The figures that we have that show our progress towards that 50% target show that that has happened. People are a lot more used to recycling. In fact, we all, I am sure, get complaints if our recycling services are not up to scratch. People are looking for opportunities to do it. There is a feel-good factor about it as well; people enjoy feeling that they are doing something that is environmentally and socially responsible.
When we talk about householders, the local authority is key as well, so if there are opportunities for the local authority to feel that they are getting more of the benefit from the way that supply chain works as well, that is helpful. We do think that there is more information that can be provided, and that is why some of the work we fund WRAP on is around providing information about what opportunities there are in your local area to recycle and discussions on improving the labels on packaging to show what is recyclable and how. Those sorts of projects we think will help.
Q255 Jim Fitzpatrick: Keep Britain Tidy said what was really important was “clear, consistent and continual communication” and SITA expressed concern that in the austerity budgeting for local authorities, one of the first things to go was the publicity budget because it was the softest option compared to social services, education or whatever. Is there any evidence that the messaging is not continuing to be clear and concise? Is there best practice that you are rolling out from some local authorities to others, or are you giving best practice and hoping that it is being picked up? What is the evidence about the messaging? You are right, Minister; most people do recognise the value of recycling and most people do take some pride and pleasure in putting out the recycling, knowing it is going to be collected and knowing it is going to be used, but how do we make sure that the messaging is maintained? What is the liaison with the LGA and individual local authorities where best practice is very much in evidence because the recycling rates are so high?
Dan Rogerson: I met LGA representatives the other day and we discussed a whole range of things, including some of my flooding responsibilities, but we talk about these opportunities on a regular basis as well. Local authorities want to be seen to be doing a good job as well; they like to report back to their local council tax payers what has been achieved locally, which we would very much welcome. Some of it will depend on how the contracts work that local authorities have with their contractors. If there are opportunities to incentivise things and to work with the contractor on getting that information back, that is helpful. There are a number of places where there are materials-recovering facilities; they will offer tours and things like that to give groups of local people the opportunity to see what happens there.
One of the key things is children and young people. There is great work that goes on in schools about this resource efficiency and wanting to make progress on this, and then they go home and tell parents and grandparents, “You need to do this. This can go in there.” That sort of work is something that I very much welcome. From our level, it is, again, what we are doing through WRAP—Recycle Now is WRAP’s behaviour-change initiative, which is doing the sorts of things you are talking about, Mr Fitzpatrick, like working with local authorities to improve things—and direct engagement with consumers. There is a website, recyclenow.com, which gives people advice on how they can recycle and what works well. There is that work at the top level, but there are many opportunities that we can explore to do even better.
Dr Church: It is also worth remembering the point the Minister made earlier about the work that WRAP is doing with some of the high-performing local authorities to find out in some detail what is working for them and then trying to spread that through into some of the other local authorities.
Q256 Jim Fitzpatrick: Who publishes the league table in terms of which local authorities are doing well and which ones are doing badly? I know each one does its own and reports to its own residents, but is there a Defra league table or is there an LGA league table?
Dan Rogerson: We know the best performers and the worst performers as well.
Dr Church: Yes. Local authorities report their data through a portal called WasteDataFlow and we publish those statistics on a regular basis. The aggregated statistics come out every quarter, the annual statistics every year, and in the annual statistics you can give the “who does what” and highlight last time round those who were the highest and the lowest performing councils on recycling.
Q257 Jim Fitzpatrick: Is there a reward for the best performing local authorities and an invitation to come and meet the Minister for those who are at the bottom of the league table?
Dan Rogerson: As I said earlier on, we are discussing with CLG ways in which we can spread best practice, but you are absolutely right; we feed back those that are doing well. The publication of the statistics in itself is quite a good thing for local authorities to be able to point to, but if we hear from the LGA that there are opportunities that local authorities would welcome to make more of their achievements—other than a huge amount of extra cash, which I am sure they would welcome but, as you will appreciate, we do not have at our disposal—then I am happy to talk to them about that. I certainly am happy to celebrate those achievements and to welcome the innovation as well, because there are sometimes new systems that have helped deliver those results.
Dr Church: One of the other things that we also try to make sure local authorities realise—going back to your point about reducing budgets—is if you recycle material you might get some value from it; if you stick it in landfill it will cost you upwards of £90 a ton. There is an economic incentive to increase recycling for a local authority, which can be used to justify ploughing some of that into the communications that give you those recycling rates in the first place.
Q258 Mr Spencer: Minister, there is almost a glass ceiling, is there not, to how much success your kids bending your ear and a leaflet from the local council is going to achieve? Do you think at the end of this process to meet all the targets you are going to have to introduce compulsory recycling?
Dan Rogerson: Certainly, compulsion is not an approach. If you look at the progress we have made, it has been perhaps by focusing on particular resource streams—so, early on, people taking glass to a glass bank and recycling that and paper being recycled. It is the number of material streams that will be taken forward. It is also about making sure that there are markets for maybe some of the other types of plastic and as those markets mature then there is a case for investing in facilities to recover and recycle those sorts of materials. We have seen that with plastic bottles. Even five years ago there were far fewer that were able to be recovered; now there are dedicated facilities that recover that material and recycle it. The value of that material goes up and therefore there is a lot more recycling activity around that. There are two ends of it, really; there is the capacity side to deal with that material and then there is, as you quite rightly say, what you do to engage with the consumers to get them to do it. Food waste would be an example of that; that is a fraction that in many places is perhaps still going into the residual waste. If we could get that out, it would really help us towards that target. For those local authorities that have made progress on that, it is a big part of their success.
Q259 Mr Spencer: I understand the motivation for local authorities—you have got that carrot/stick effect. If you are saying for me as a householder you are not going to use a stick—you are not going to make me do it—how are you going to encourage me to do it? What benefit is there for me as a householder, if I can put up with my kids moaning about recycling? Where is my motivation to go the extra mile and do the extra stuff that you are going to need me to do?
Dan Rogerson: Pretty much in all cases now you will be paying some, if not all the council tax. If you are involved in local discussions about how you want to see money spent in your area, you want to see the council tax you pay spent on the services you want. If more of it is going on landfill tax or on paying the gate charges at an energy-from-waste plant, if you can see more of that material going off and going in as a resource that has been captured without those charges on it, then that is a benefit to you. Sometimes, again, that is an argument that is hard to get across to people.
Q260 Mr Spencer: You need me to be engaged, then, do you not, really? As a householder, you really need me to be tuned in to, frankly, what my council is doing. Unless there is a water leak at the end of my drive or my lamp post falls over on my street, I do not even know my council exists. How are you going to motivate those people that are going to be difficult to get to if you are not going to use stick and the carrot does not look very tasty? I am just struggling to understand how it is going to work.
Dan Rogerson: Mr Spencer, I am getting your huge desire to see some sort of stick from Government to force people to recycle here.
Mr Spencer: I just want to know the information
Dan Rogerson: I understand the argument you are making, but what I would say is, if we saw the best practice brought in across councils across the country, in line with the local circumstances that meet local need, then we could get to that 50% target. As we are talking about numbers, it is a numbers game and you will not get every single person in every single local authority necessarily without the sorts of things you are saying to deal with that, but to get to 50% we do not have to. To get to 100% we would. If we can continue to work with local authorities to see more and more materials recovered in each area, then that is helpful, as is continuing with the education so that in those areas as many people as possible are responding to that. You are quite right: to get to every single last person is not possible. There are all sorts of things going on in their lives; they may have just lost their job or just had a bereavement in the family. I accept that. But for many people in those areas we would be able to see better progress and that numbers game will allow us to get to the 50% that we were talking about earlier on.
Q261 Chair: Is there any cross-contamination where people fail to recycle correctly?
Dan Rogerson: Yes. Information is crucial there in talking to people about it. Part of it will be things like different sorts of plastics that at that point are not recycled at that particular materials recovery facility, although, as I say, we hope that more and more of those different materials will be recovered. We have brought in the regulations to help ensure that what comes out the other end of those materials recovery facilities is of a good quality that is useful to the industry that will re-use and recycle that material. As there is the pressure to get better quality out the end, there is the pressure to have that communication with residents to improve what goes into it.
There are a whole range of systems. In some cases homeowners will sort a lot of those materials themselves and they will be collected in different boxes or bags or whatever; in other places a lot more of them will be collected together—as you are aware, Madam Chair; you know all this—and they will be sorted more at the facility. There are a number of different systems. Contamination is a problem, but with good communication and good education we have come a long way in seeing a much better quality of stuff that can go through. We have got a long way to go on that, and that is the whole point about looking at the regulations and the materials recovery facilities. I accept the challenge from the industry at that point in the cycle that we could do even more to deal with contamination.
Q262 Neil Parish: Keeping in mind the requirements of the waste hierarchy, in what circumstances should energy-from-waste treatment plants be used—so, rather than recycling, going into an energy plant?
Dan Rogerson: We want to prevent waste arisings in the first place; we want to be more efficient so that we waste less resource; we want to look at opportunities to re‑use products that energy and labour has gone into manufacturing if we can do that. Then we can recycle and then after that, before we get to landfill, which we have moved away from in a big way, fortunately, we then have energy recovery. There are a number of different treatments and ways in which we can do that. Bearing in mind our earlier discussion that we constantly keep under review the capacity issues there, there are those different treatments, whether it be anaerobic digestion, gasification or the energy from waste—and if it is energy from waste, trying to capture the heat as well as the generation of electricity. There are different analyses for what those technologies might bring. They are each perhaps better for different streams of feedstock and they all have a part to play, but the hierarchy remains very much the guide to our policymaking.
Q263 Neil Parish: In the past, much of our incineration in this country has been really just disposing of waste and incinerating it and not making enough use of the energy either for electricity or for directly heating homes. Is there capacity for that still, or what?
Dan Rogerson: Could we go further to capture that energy?
Neil Parish: Yes.
Dan Rogerson: There are a number of projects still in train to add to that capacity. As I say, in some cases we have re-evaluated it, but there are still projects in development—things that will be built over the next five or 10 years—that will add to that capacity. Some of that is around municipal waste and some of it is around other forms of waste and is on a more commercial basis. I am not aware if there are any commercial incinerators in development at the moment.
Dr Church: There are some gasification plants.
Q264 Neil Parish: Does Defra do any work on how much resource is used to recycle, say, paper or whatever compared with if you burnt that paper and then grew some more trees? There is an argument that it is quite finely balanced sometimes between what resources you use to recycle and what you do to grow fresh.
Dan Rogerson: That lifecycle analysis is important; you are absolutely right, Mr Parish. It also important for everyone else involved in that chain on a commercial basis. Yes, we would look at what the impacts are on the environment, but those businesses will look at what is better for them as well. Recycled paper, for example, is hugely useful to the cardboard-packaging industry and those sorts of things as well; they will look at that as a resource that they want to get their hands on and make best use of and add value to. Even with paper when it is going round, you do need some extra pulp because the fibres only go round so often, so you do need some virgin pulp, but then we want it from sustainable forests. As Minister for forests, I can talk about that as well. That is why I have said “moving towards a circular economy”. I was having a discussion with Dr Church the other day; he was saying there are materials that might be recovered from a demolition that nowadays you would not want to recover and re-use because we do not want to use those materials anymore—we have moved away from that. But in most cases, we would like to see materials re-used because we think that is the best way of capturing that resource.
Q265 Neil Parish: Do you think there is still quite a lot of waste that is not recycled going into landfill that could be incinerated and the power used to directly pump water into people’s homes or whatever, which would be much better? There are a lot of people who are anti-incineration—
Chair: We are coming on to that later.
Dan Rogerson: I will just give a quick answer. Energy recovery is better than sticking it in a hole in the ground. We have the landfill tax still, and we set out in the Budget that there are going to be RPI increases in that to maintain the push against landfill.
Q266 Sheryll Murray: Could I turn to exporting waste for energy recovery? Does the practice of exporting waste from England for recovery in other countries adhere to the waste hierarchy?
Dan Rogerson: I would say when it is compared to landfill, yes it does, but it does mean that that is potentially an energy resource that is lost to this country. It is one of those judgments that we have to look at. In terms of refuse-derived fuel, we opened a call for evidence earlier on in the year, which closed in May, so that we could get evidence from where people think that is working well, about what the challenges and the problems are, and about what should count as the sort of product we want to see exported. There are a number of issues around that. We are looking now at the evidence that we had back from that while we decide what we think the future will be and whether it is necessary for us to intervene in the ways that we were talking about earlier on.
Q267 Sheryll Murray: Can you give us any idea of when you will be publishing a response to that call for evidence, Minister?
Dr Church: We had a good response, which is code for—
Dan Rogerson: There is a lot of it.
Dr Church: A lot, and it is very interesting and useful material, so it is taking us some time to digest it. At the moment, I do not have a date. We will do it as soon as we can.
Q268 Sheryll Murray: Is it going to be months or weeks?
Dr Church: Certainly not more than a small number of months, otherwise my colleagues are going to be in trouble from me.
Q269 Ms Ritchie: Minister, on to the subject of anaerobic digestion. How successful do you think Defra’s AD Strategy and Action Plan has been?
Dan Rogerson: We are seeing an increase in capacity, and there are a number of ways in which we help. I mentioned earlier on the AD Loan Fund that we have there. There is the Green Investment Bank and projects alongside that. That has been part of a project that has come forward just north of London—I am trying to remember where—in Hertfordshire or somewhere; there is a plant there. AD is something that is being increasingly taken up as an option, and we welcome that as a way of getting the energy back from that feedstock, but there are also potential uses of digestate, the other product that comes out of it, in terms of land improvement, although we have got to make sure that that is of a high enough quality when it goes onto land. There are real benefits to that and we are making some progress on that.
Q270 Ms Ritchie: How can the problem of obtaining regular access to food waste for AD plants be addressed?
Dan Rogerson: There are a number of sources for that. There is the sort of source we have been talking about already, which is that municipal waste collection, and where authorities are collecting it, that is useful. What we want to see is less food wasted in terms of the supply chain. If there is stuff that is still fit for human consumption, we want to see it eaten; we do not want to see it wasted. However, there will be times when there are by-products and so on, or things that are unavoidable. What we are seeing increasingly higher up that supply chain is manufacturers and food processers looking at opportunities for those materials to go into something that avoids it being a waste or a cost to them. That is helpful.
In terms of other feedstocks like animal slurries, there are other pressures on livestock farmers about when and where they can spread it, storage and issues around water quality and so on, so there are opportunities there that are solutions for them. Some of the work we are doing with the AD Loan Fund is around those farm-scale AD projects. They will need a balance of feedstocks, so in those cases they will look for food. There are opportunities for local collection that can feed into those sorts of projects as well. It is not something I would say that we have seen as a big market failure or a problem yet, but clearly there are opportunities to capture more of that waste, and we would want to see that happen.
Q271 Ms Ritchie: How can the problem of anaerobic digestion feedstock be balanced with the over-riding need to reduce food waste? That follows on from what you have said.
Dan Rogerson: It does. To be very clear, first of all, we want to avoid food being wasted. It makes sense for food manufacturers that they are not putting in all that effort, resource, water, energy and so on to produce something that is not then eaten. From the point of view of food security and the availability of food as well, if there are other routes that we can have for that food to reach consumers, then we want to see that happen, but if it is unavoidable or there is a problem with it for any reason, then rather than end up in landfill it is much better that it goes into AD.
Q272 Ms Ritchie: We understand that around about half of the 7 million tons of food thrown away each year could have been consumed. What is Defra doing to stop people throwing away so much consumable food?
Dan Rogerson: This is one of the areas that WRAP have done a great deal of work on. We have funded them to do that. It has been reducing as a result of that work, I would like to say. Some of it will come down now to local authorities, though, really. If they are looking at whether they can catch that food waste fraction in what is still going into landfill or energy recovery of other sorts, we can collect that and use that for these sorts of projects.
Dr Church: We have also, again with the help of WRAP, done a couple of voluntary agreements. One is the Courtauld Commitment with the retail sector, which looks at ways that they can work to reduce food waste. The second is with the hospitality sector, more recently, again looking at what can be done to reduce food waste in canteens, restaurants and suchlike. Those are also important elements of that overall picture.
Q273 Ms Ritchie: Is there a sufficient market for the outputs of anaerobic digestion in terms of digestate and biogas?
Dan Rogerson: This is quite an interesting area, because there is the prospect now of vehicle fuels coming from it and of digestate being used for a number of other processes. I referred earlier on to BIS looking at innovation and trying to stimulate the demand side of all this. If there are ways we can use the bio-economy, or use fractions of it, to do all sorts of things then that is great, because that is even more productive than just getting the energy recovery value from things. There is a standard for digestate, which is PAS 110, which is what we would need to see in terms of it being spread on the land and used in that way so we can reassure people that if it goes out there it is fit for purpose, in the same way that PAS 100 serves for compost. Is that a British standard, PAS?
Dr Church: Yes.
Dan Rogerson: It is a British standard that means that we know that whatever comes out of the process, if it is being used on the land, is okay. There are other opportunities—as I say, new projects around vehicle fuels and so on—that offer an exciting use for that material.
Q274 Ms Ritchie: Could Defra’s AD Action Plan be updated to address the problems of input and output?
Dr Church: The Action Plan covered the issue of output very much, because we considered that was an issue. One of the things, for example, WRAP have been doing is some field trials of digestate on land and saying, “Let’s see how it works, what is the benefit to crops, etc.” to then be able to say to farmers more generally, “Look, this is a good material to have”. That kind of idea is certainly something that was in the plan first time round. We have continued to do more, as the Minister said, with the assistance of WRAP and the industry to look at other potential outlets for the materials. At the moment we do not think that it stacks up to be something as grand as another plan, but there is lots of activity that is there that can be taken forward and that we are taking forward.
Q275 Chair: Keep Britain Tidy thought that there may be an option to deal with surplus food being redistributed to feed people. Is that something that is considered? Is guidance given by Defra?
Dan Rogerson: There are different schemes out there already operating, from things like Company Shop, who I have met with, who have already operated in food processing businesses where things that are misshapen or mislabelled in some way can be sold on at a cheaper rate to people within those businesses, who are now looking for some town-centre outlets to sell that at a cheaper rate. There are civil society groups that access food for community kitchens and those sorts of things. Yes, if there are opportunities for that food to be eaten as it was intended, then we want to see that, and that work does go on. I have had meetings with a number of organisations that do that.
Dr Church: Yes. We had a summit with the supermarket retailers and some of these third-sector organisations such as FareShare and FoodCycle, and following on from that they went away, with the help of WRAP, to develop a code about how you go about, as a local charity, getting hold of surplus food from your local supermarkets, etc. Some of the supermarkets already have very well established relationships to do that kind of thing. It is very much something that we encourage.
Q276 Chair: Is any work being done to see if anaerobic digestion would take garden waste and trees and plants that are recycled by local authorities?
Dr Church: No, because apart from anything else at the moment it is much cheaper to do simple composting for those.
Q277 Richard Drax: Incineration, Minister. Bearing in mind it is not particularly popular, as we know—not least if you try and base it in your consistency you have a huge opinion against it normally—is incineration a long-term waste management solution or just an interim step towards meeting the EU landfill diversion targets?
Dan Rogerson: It depends on how one defines “interim”, really: whether you are talking in centuries or whether you are talking over a couple of years. There is significant investment in these plants, so they are going to be in operation for a fair period of time. In terms of the ideal scenario, we want to see materials re-used and recycled before we go to energy recovery. While we think for residual waste there is a need for that capacity, it is not something that we would want to see sucking material back down that hierarchy; we want to move towards a circular economy, which means pushing things up rather than sinking down the hierarchy. There is certainly a role for it, but as we have said earlier on and discussed, we keep under review how much capacity we need so that we do not have an over-capacity that would then distort the way the market works.
Q278 Richard Drax: Forgive me for asking the next question. It is not a trick question; I am just interested. It sprung to mind as I was listening to you. How many of those incinerators that we have in this country provide some sort of energy to something or someone? Do you know?
Dan Rogerson: All modern plants will do that. I would have to check. In maybe some sort of medical incineration and some isolated island communities and that sort of thing, where incineration has been used for a lot longer—as Mr Parish was saying, they have been out there for a while—I suppose because they are older we probably would not be capturing energy from them. Clearly they have to meet environmental standards anyway for what comes out the chimney and those are tightened up and we deal with that. But anything that has been made in the last decade or couple of decades would be capturing energy, because electricity is where they get a big part of their income from. There are some that capture electricity and probably make less use of the heat, so there is a real challenge to make sure that we provide opportunities for maybe clustering industry close to them that requires that heat. There are a number of examples of where that can happen, but there is a bit of a gap still to narrow on that. It is probably a discussion to have with my colleagues at DECC around what their plans are for making sure we make best use of them.
Dr Church: There are 47 energy-from-waste plants in England. Five of those are gasification-based technology; the other 42 are what you might call more traditional incinerators. All of the ones that we have been supporting have the capacity to use the heat—so, they already do electricity; the heat is a capacity—but, as the Minister said, not many of them yet do use it. It is a small number—a handful.
Q279 Richard Drax: Thank you; that is very helpful. The next question leads on, I suppose, in a sense. Is a moratorium or a ban on new incinerators being built a feasible option or is that something that you would not consider? Where are we on new incinerators?
Dan Rogerson: As I say, at the moment we continue to review what we think the capacity is that we need as a country for all that material. It may be that some of that is not as much from the municipal household waste stream; there might be other things that go into that, but what we aspire to do is to recover and re-use as much material as we can. There is a need to deal with that residual stuff and so there is a capacity out there that we need to fill; that is why we still have PFI projects that are being delivered.
Richard Drax: For new incinerators.
Dan Rogerson: Yes. There are still projects in the pipeline.
Q280 Richard Drax: How many more have we got coming? Do you know?
Dan Rogerson: Off the top of my head, I am not sure, but looking at the figure that Mr Parish was pointing at, there are a number still out there.
Dr Church: There are 28 energy-from-waste facilities in the PFI programme. One of them has just today been refused planning permission; one of them does not yet have planning permission; eight are at some form of construction or commissioning; and 18 are operational.
Richard Drax: Statistics was your strong point, Dr Church, I would say. I am very impressed.
Dr Church: I appeared before one of your colleague committees recently on the topic.
Q281 Richard Drax: This leads on, really. What steps has Defra taken to ensure that incineration and other thermal treatment technologies are not used at the expense of options higher up the waste hierarchy such as reduction or recycling? You have answered that question really, have you not, in a sense?
Dan Rogerson: What we need to do is help stimulate the demand. That is work that some of our colleagues across Government and in industry will be doing to add value to the materials that are out there, and then if there is a market for those materials, clearly, there will be a pull to take those in rather than see them go into energy recovery. That is the main thing. We are not looking at tax drivers to make that happen, but we think the markets are increasingly getting stronger to pull things into those processes that are more environmentally beneficial but also more economically beneficial as we move towards a circular economy.
Q282 Richard Drax: How does Defra ensure that it is only genuinely residual waste that gets sent to incinerators?
Dr Church: Gate fees.
Dan Rogerson: Yes, gate fees. That is the expense that whoever is turning up with their lorry load of material to go into incineration has to pay to tip it there. If there is something they can make better use of and extract from that before it goes there, it will be better for them; they may well have a value attached to be able to sell some of the material that they recover and also minimise those gate fees. That is the key pressure.
Q283 Richard Drax: One last quick point on incinerators. I do not know, but presumably the further away an incinerator is from those who want to use it or the benefits of it, the better for the planners and for those who have to put up with these things. How far can the pipework or whatever it is reach before it loses its effectiveness?
Dan Rogerson: For heat, it is not a very great distance at all. Again, that is probably a question slightly more for my colleagues at DECC than for me, but in terms of heat being useful, it cannot travel that far at all. The electricity goes into the grid, but heat does not travel that far at all, so you have an issue with that.
Q284 Mr Spencer: If we can talk about landfill, you like “stick” when it comes to landfill because you use that to divert people away from landfill. I am wondering if Defra has considered using a similar fiscal tool for the overall amount of residual waste.
Dan Rogerson: It is a mantra for those of us across Government who are asked about tax that it is very much a matter for Her Majesty’s Treasury as to what tax policy is, although the fact is that in the Budget the Chancellor responded to make sure that that landfill tax maintains its bite and its efficacy by setting out the trajectory with RPI increases is important.
Q285 Mr Spencer: How much engagement was there between the Treasury and Defra on where to set that?
Dan Rogerson: We help to provide the evidence base. If the Chancellor is interested to know whether it is slowing down and now not providing the push that it was originally designed to do back in 1996 when it was brought in, then we can provide that evidence base. Equally, each time we increase that there are other questions for the economy about how that happens as well, so the Chancellor will look at that picture across the economy.
Q286 Mr Spencer: When it comes to residual waste, are you having those discussions with Treasury about how you are going to reduce that amount of residual waste? Are you saying to Treasury, “We should consider”—
Dan Rogerson: Our discussions on that would be around the circular economy. It is around making sure that if there is usable material, it is used and back in the economy. There are all these discussions around how much precious metals there are that could be recovered compared to the cost of mining those precious metals from a vast amount of ore to get down to what is in there. Increasingly, when we are looking at waste electronic goods, that is a question—not that those would go to landfill anyway. It is those kinds of discussions: the pull to get access to those materials rather than the stick. There are a lot of carrots out there for those who invest in capturing those materials.
Q287 Mr Spencer: The European Commission has recently confirmed plans to ban landfilling of all recoverable municipal waste by 2030. Are you going to hit that target?
Dan Rogerson: That is not a target that has been set; that is an aspiration that they have talked about in this communication, so it is something that is up for debate about whether we think that is a meaningful and useful target. We are very clear that landfill is the last option, but there are some things that will always go into landfill—hazardous waste or things where you have extracted everything you possibly can from it and there is that real genuine residual fraction that you need an output for. In some cases, energy recovery—incineration—would not be appropriate for some of those materials, potentially, so there will always be a need for some form of safe containment and landfill for some products. We agree with our colleagues at the European Union level; we want to minimise what that is. That is what the landfill tax is about and that is what all the work we have been talking about this afternoon is about on getting better use of those resources so we really minimise what goes into landfill.
Also, the resource management industry will be investing less in capacity to secure the void that you need for landfill because they do not see it as so much of a market as before. The business traditionally was about getting as many holes in the ground as you could and buying them up before anybody else got to them so that you had that capacity. In some cases, some businesses that did that have now got over-capacity, which they cannot fill because of the drivers that we have put in place.
Q288 Mr Spencer: I am just trying to get a feel, really, for your confidence as to whether you can achieve that 2030 target with all of those carrots that you talked about or whether you think that is not achievable with just carrots or even whether it is available with carrots and sticks.
Dan Rogerson: As I say, it is not a target for us at the moment, so we have not done the work. We will be doing that now we have had the communication from the European Union. We have given our initial response, which I can share with you today, that we need to be convinced that those targets are meaningful and deliverable, not just for us but for many other countries in the EU that are further away from the existing targets than we are—and there are a lot of those. That is the work that will be going on now. It is important that we have these consultations with industry, with local authorities—with everybody—about what we think is achievable, and then this opening gambit from the Commission, in terms of the communication, goes into this process of discussion with the European Parliament and the European Council before we end up with a new set, potentially, of targets, or at least a directive at the end of it.
Q289 Roger Williams: There have been some very serious fires at waste recycling plants just lately—one in the Chair’s constituency, certainly one in Alan Beith’s constituency, and a very serious one in Smethwick. When I first got elected, there was a fire in a waste tyre dump that was left to burn out eventually. The Chief Fire Officers Association has been working with the Environment Agency to set up a protocol on how these sites should be managed to reduce the fire risk. Do you think that is sufficient, or do you think more work needs to be done on that?
Dan Rogerson: When I was appointed as a Minister on a Monday in October, we had Defra questions on the Thursday. In that very first session of Defra questions, I had a question on a waste fire in an honourable Member’s constituency, and the more I heard about it the more I understood why that question was asked and what the local community had been through. I went on then to meet some people from that community. We have had other fires, as you have mentioned, up in Northumberland and other prominent examples elsewhere. Some of these are small and maybe do not hit the national radar and they go out quite quickly; others of these are huge and burn for a very long time and when you have hot weather they flare up again because they never entirely go out. There are issues there around the resources of the fire and rescue services, as you point out, Mr Williams. There is also the fact that you have got operators there that are not carrying out businesses in the way that we would want to see and are probably undercutting some legitimate operators that are doing really good work. For all those reasons, it is important that we get tough on the operators that are not living up to their permits.
I had early discussions following that with Dr Leinster, the Chief Executive of the Environment Agency, and Lord Smith, as Chairman, to discuss the approach that they have taken. That has led to an approach in which I hope we will see a lot more early intervention, so where there are reputable operators that are working well on that risk-based approach to regulation we are not necessarily on their backs all the time, but if there are operators where there is any question mark we are getting in there early to sort this out. In some of these examples, huge amounts of material have built up and by then it is a big problem, because that company probably really does not have the resource to deal with the pile of waste that they have accumulated. When we then take enforcement action, if they are shut down and walk away, who is left to deal with it? The site owner, and potentially the taxpayer in some form as well. Getting in there earlier is the approach that I have emphasised, and I am very pleased with the way that the Environment Agency is now doing that. They used their expertise to do it before but in one or two examples, as we have seen, earlier action would have been very helpful.
Q290 Roger Williams: Is there enforcement action that can be taken now or do you anticipate bringing in regulations they could enforce to make sure that this code of conduct is adhered to?
Dan Rogerson: It is not so much about regulation; it is about how they are operated. The regulatory framework is there, but it is about how we deploy the resources of the Agency in which way and against which rogue operators that we go into. We were also able in the Budget to secure an extra £5 million to deal with waste crime and I am working and officials are working with the Agency on how we make best use of that money. We hope to announce soon the direction of travel on what we do, not just in this area but on other things like fly‑tipping and all those things, which are an annoyance to local communities, a potential hazard, but also, as I say, a drain on the resources of the legitimate industry because it is taking business and material away from them.
Q291 Chair: You mentioned that there is a huge amount of material built up. If this is combustible material, is it possibly the fact that they are holding on to the material for too long in conditions that lead to combustion?
Dan Rogerson: Yes, absolutely. I think what happens is that they over-promise in terms of the material they take away at cut rates and then any materials recovery that they are doing is not carried out quickly enough and it sits there for too long. What we need and what we will increasingly see is the Agency keeping an eye on these sorts of sites and, where they see a problem start to occur, getting in early and saying, “Right, we want this dealt with very soon. If it is not, we will take more enforcement action.” That is the answer to dealing with this: it is getting in early.
Q292 Chair: Are there penalties that the Environment Agency can impose?
Dan Rogerson: Yes, absolutely; they can vary permits and start to put restrictions in place. If those restrictions are ignored or the permit is not complied with, then they can take court action against these operators.
Q293 Chair: Thank you. Just a couple of quick questions at the end. In your view, is the Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive working as efficiently and effectively as it might?
Dan Rogerson: The question was: is there an unbalanced playing field between PRNs and PERNs—so material that would stay in this country and material that is being exported? There was a question about whether there was enough attention being taken to materials that were being exported and things that were full of contaminants were being credited as being legitimate packaging going off for recycling. With the Agency, we have toughened up the way that operates. As Dr Church said earlier as well, we have under review what our targets are for different materials and we have taken action to change those where we think that is necessary. We have to keep these things under review and take action if it is needed.
Dr Church: The way that we implement the Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive in the UK is different from some other member states. We are always interested in their experience. The EU communication includes proposals to amend the Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive. We will be looking closely at some of those and what the implications are and whether they have implications for how we operate the system going forward as well.
Q294 Chair: Do you believe that the Department is taking fly‑tipping and waste crimes seriously enough?
Dan Rogerson: I mentioned earlier on fly-tipping in the context of getting tough on rogue operators. We were very keen to secure the money in the Budget from the Treasury—from Government as a whole—for tackling waste crime, and that is another key area of waste crime. It is crime, and so we want to see action on it. We have also had a partnership with others, including CLG, to come up with guidance on dealing with fly-tipping and making sure that we get tougher on it. Yes, we are taking action on that. My hope is that in using the £5 million we have been given to tackle waste crime generally, we will demonstrate very strongly the case that investment there will secure greater revenue for the Treasury and, indeed, more resources for legitimate business and that we can make the case for continued investment in that area.
Q295 Chair: It was put to us during the course of the evidence that waste and resource policy should be moved from Defra to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. How would you respond to that, Minister?
Dan Rogerson: There is all the environmental regulatory and policy activity that lies very much with Defra that resource management is at the heart of. These materials are resource just as water and energy are, for example. Business will make really good use of those, but I do not think we are hearing a big argument that water policy or energy policy should be moved to BIS. BIS is already quite a big department with a lot on its hands; if you moved everything in there, you may have problems in dealing with it all. We work very closely with BIS, but, hopefully as we have demonstrated this afternoon, Defra continues to take this area of policy very seriously and to work with partners to deliver improvements, and we want to continue to do so in the future.
Chair: Minister and Dr Church, thank you very much for being with us this afternoon, being generous with your time and answering all our questions. We thank you very much indeed. We now stand adjourned.
Oral evidence: Waste management HC 241 21