Environmental Targets (Residual Waste) (England) Regulations 2022
(1 year, 10 months ago)
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Lord Benyon
That the Grand Committee do consider the Environmental Targets (Residual Waste) (England) Regulations 2022.
Relevant document: 25th Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee (special attention drawn to the instrument).
The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Benyon) (Con)
My Lords, we want to make more of our precious resources. As it is, we produce too much waste. Recycling rates for households have stagnated at around 45% for many years, and although we have made significant strides towards reducing our reliance on landfill, we lose far too many valuable materials to incineration.
The purpose of this instrument is to reduce dramatically the amount of these valuable materials we bury or burn. There are several ways to achieve this. We want to reduce waste being produced in the first place, and we can do this by making products last longer, designing them for repair and, of course, in the case of food, driving less wasteful practices. We must also redouble our efforts to maximise what we recycle so that materials can be used again and again in the productive economy.
We will embark on our target pathway by delivering on our commitments to implement the collection and packaging reforms. These include introducing consistent household and business recycling collections in England, extended producer responsibility for packaging and a deposit return scheme for drinks containers, for which we announced the next steps last Friday. Such measures reduce the pressure we place on our precious environment in what we extract, manufacture and then treat as waste.
It is an Environment Act requirement to set in secondary legislation at least one target in the priority area of resource efficiency and waste reduction. Five years ago, the 25-year environment plan committed to work towards the elimination of avoidable waste by 2050. This instrument puts us on the pathway to delivering this commitment by reducing the amount of waste we produce and facilitating more recycling. It enshrines in legislation our commitment to deliver our highly ambitious resources and waste strategy. The core purpose of the strategy is to maximise the value of our resources and minimise the environmental impact of our waste.
I turn now to the details of the instrument. It places a requirement on government to halve the amount of residual waste we produce to 287 kilograms per capita by 2042. This is a fall from the 574 kilograms per capita measured in 2019. We define residual waste as waste that originated in England that is sent to landfill, put through incineration, used in energy recovery in the UK or sent overseas for energy recovery.
We exclude major mineral wastes from our targets, such as concrete, bricks, sand and soil. They are largely inert when treated as waste. We exclude them to focus attention on materials where the environmental impact per tonne of waste treatment is greatest, such as landfilling biodegradable materials or incinerating plastic.
Our target takes a holistic perspective of waste, incorporating a broad range of materials, including plastics. This approach guards against the risk that a target could be reached simply by switching from one material to another environmentally harmful material type. Our target ensures that waste is reduced overall.
We recognise from the consultation a desire to see an additional target that reduces material resource use and improves productivity. We have actively researched this and made large strides forward in our knowledge, but the Secretary of State cannot yet set a long-term target in this area and be satisfied that it is achievable, which the Environment Act requires. We will continue in our efforts to make progress here, working closely with our colleagues in BEIS.
In conclusion, this target to halve residual waste is a crucial legal mechanism to drive materials up the waste hierarchy so we make the best and most productive use of them. It is ambitious. It enshrines in legislation our ambitions in the 25-year environment plan to minimise waste and ensures that we deliver our resources and waste strategy commitments. I beg to move.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
I thank my noble friend for presenting the SI and the updated targets this afternoon; they are very helpful indeed. I am just trying to get my head around the government policy.
I accept that I am not completely up to date but, at the time when I left as the MP for Thirsk and Malton, we were selling quite a lot of waste to Holland and paying for it to be transported there. It was waste from North Yorkshire and the City of York, which, as my noble friend said, is the hardest waste to get rid of because it is often timber, window frames and all the itemised materials that he stated. It seemed a huge waste of resource. One reason we did that was because the landfill sites in North Yorkshire were already either full or about to become full.
The reason we exported the waste to Holland was because there was a ready market there for—what is the terminology? My noble friend referred to incineration, which is, of course, a red rag to a bull for many areas of Britain because they think of chimneys and smoke coming out of them. In fact, I am a big proponent of energy from waste. It seems to fall between two stools. My understanding of the Energy Security Bill going through Parliament at the moment is that the Government are looking favourably on energy heat networks; perhaps the old-fashioned term is “energy from waste”. Why are we not recognising energy from waste or energy heat networks as a form whereby we create two streams: we dispose of waste that is difficult to get rid of, as my noble friend said, and create an energy strand? Is that something the Government would look favourably on?
With those few remarks, I approve of this statutory instrument.
Lord Watson of Wyre Forest (Lab)
My Lords, I hope that I am conducting myself in a way that is considered normal, if I can describe it as that. It is back to mineral extraction for the Minister. He said that the mineral waste extraction target was removed from these targets on the grounds that it is largely inert. In essence, my concern is for export-led growth and security of supply. It seems to me that this country has an opportunity in areas such as electric automotive to be a world leader, which is why the market is looking at mineral extraction for lithium and at reopening mines.
I have read the response that the department is still trying to work out the best way to assess a baseline, but it seems to me that if we are going to extract minerals, we need some kind of public buy-in in that process. A proper baseline and some kind of reassurance on its measurement seems pretty urgent to me. In its response to the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, Defra said that it was still considering the evidence and how best to present that information. Perhaps the Minister could suggest how he might approach that, given the concerns raised in the various submissions to that committee. Can he give some reassurance to those communities that are considering whether to support people who seek to extract minerals in their community?
Baroness Parminter (LD)
I thank the Minister for his introduction of this statutory instrument. I hope that I am not taking him out of context, but I would dispute one thing he said which was that we take a holistic view on waste. This statutory instrument shows that by excluding the vast majority of waste produced in England—that is waste from demolition, construction and excavation, to which the noble Lord, Lord Watson, referred—the Government do not exactly have a holistic view of waste. Although we may quibble with the explanation given in the Explanatory Memorandum that the reason for that exclusion is in order
“to focus on reducing waste that is more environmentally harmful”,
I think all of us would agree that there is significant harm from much of that waste. There is much waste in the construction area, but I will come back to that.
This SI focuses on what I would call consumer waste. As the Minister was good enough to outline, it needs to focus on consumer waste because, as an OEP report last week showed, the targets for such waste have deteriorated since 2018. The Minister referred to the fact that we have stalled on recycling; we are actually sending more waste to incineration now than we were in 2018.
So we need a renewed focus; one hopes that these targets will provide that because they need to. The Minister referred to the welcome provisions in the Environment Act to encourage more uniform collection via municipal authorities around the country. That is an essential step if we are to make progress on consumer waste but, over the past couple of years, we have not seen anything near significant progress on extended producer responsibility. He mentioned the fact that the deposit return scheme announcement was made on Friday, but it will not happen until 2025 whereas it is coming into effect in Scotland this year. Equally, it excludes glass.
We need a sense of urgency, given the need to move on waste; it is an area where we would like to put a rocket under Defra to get it moving forward. We hear that there may be a refreshed resources and waste strategy document later this year. We do not need another strategy; we just need a bit more action in this space.
I see that the noble Baroness, Lady Young, is in her place. When our committee looked at how to mobilise people to take the action needed for climate and environment, the responses we received from the various departments on how to improve people’s contribution to the waste targets were one of their weakest areas. We had the Secretary of State before us talking about the success of the plastic bag levy; that is great but it happened back in the coalition days. I hope that these targets will give the department a sense of pace and urgency to encourage it to get a move on. Otherwise, if it carries on with its mantra of going with the grain of consumer choice, we will not make the progress that we need.
Finally, as the noble Lord, Lord Watson, raised, construction and demolition waste are excluded. The consultation said that it
“is also a high priority and we are not overlooking this.”
The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee picked this up, in response to which the department said that it was considering a separate target. I note that the Minister mentioned discussions with BEIS, which are to be commended. Might he be prepared to say a bit more about that today, including whether it will be part of the refreshed resources and waste strategy later this year? Or are we going to have to wait a bit longer? As I say, I do not think we have the time for that.
Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)
We supported the passage of the Environment Act although, during that process, we expressed concern that, if key targets were not included in the legislation, it could lead to the Government downgrading their ambition. The targets in the various SIs are significantly less ambitious than many would like, suggesting that our fears were correct. As noted by the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, and my noble friend Lord Watson, the waste reduction target omits major mineral waste from construction, demolition and excavation activities—the majority of waste produced in England. This omission must be rectified if the target is to deliver on its aim of incentivising a circular economy.
The waste reduction aimed for—a 50% reduction on 2019 levels—is not aligned with either the scale of the problem or the potential to reduce resource use, as well as minimising waste and increasing recycling. A 50% reduction on 2019 levels is relatively unambitious. The department does not have the strongest track record in delivering the transition to a circular economy. I am afraid that England has lagged behind other countries in the UK in bringing new schemes on stream, as highlighted by the significant delays to and the watering down of the Government’s deposit return scheme. Scotland has its own scheme, which will launch ahead of Defra’s, and Wales is set to launch its scheme in October 2025. The Explanatory Memorandum notes the Government’s resources and waste strategy, which aims to increase municipal recycling rates to an overall level of 65% and lower the volume of waste going to landfill.
We have seen slippage in performance across much of the UK, although I am proud to say that Wales has outperformed the other UK nations. The recent results from Newport City Council, where I was the leader before joining your Lordships’ House, show a 10% increase in Newport’s recycling performance over a year. Newport is not only the best-performing authority in Wales in terms of recycling but the best-performing city in the whole of the UK. It continues to work hard to meet the Welsh Government’s target of a 70% recycling rate by 2025.
Lord Benyon (Con)
I thank noble Lords for their valuable contributions to this debate. The residual waste reduction target put forward in this instrument meets the requirements under the Environment Act to set a target in the areas of resource efficiency and waste reduction. As the Act requires, the Secretary of State has sought appropriate advice from independent experts and is satisfied that this target can be met. I remind noble Lords that satisfaction that the target can be met is absolutely a key requirement. Secretaries of State and their Ministers cannot just come before a committee such as this to seek a good headline or try to cut the Opposition off at the knees by having unbelievably high targets. They have to be targets that can be achieved.
I note in particular the opinion of the Office for Environmental Protection, which commends this target for its ambition and agrees with the decision to exclude major mineral wastes from it; I will come on to talk more about that in a minute. Although the data is not robust enough to set a separate target to reduce major mineral wastes at this stage, we are continuing to look at what is needed to advance the evidence around major mineral wastes and how they can be reduced. This will allow us to assess whether it would be appropriate for a separate target to reduce major mineral waste to be set in the future. The target to reduce residual waste, excluding major mineral wastes, will focus on where the environmental impacts per tonne of waste are greatest. By meeting the target, we will deliver the environmental benefits of reducing waste.
I should have started—I apologise to the Committee —by declaring an interest. I had forgotten that my family has interests in former gravel extractions, which were filled by inert building material waste and have since been reopened. Those materials have been exploited to produce material for the building industry. That is an example of where there is a market for better reuse; it means that minerals are not being dug out of the ground but recycled.
My noble friend Lady McIntosh asked about exports of waste. The Government have fulfilled their obligations as a party to the United Nations Basel Convention and introduced controls which mean that shipments of Y48 plastic waste from Great Britain require the prior approval of the regulators in the country of destination as well as the relevant British regulator. Our proposal to ban exports of plastic waste, particularly to non-OECD countries, will go further than the EU’s ban as it will not be limited to just one category of plastic waste.
My noble friend referred to energy from waste and said that a lot of waste companies have become energy companies. It must be said that this is still an emitting activity but, obviously, it is much better for the waste to go to that use than to landfill. Crucially, the waste hierarchy ranks options for waste management from best to worst in terms of environmental impacts and moving to a circular economy. It is both a guide to sustainable waste management and a legal requirement, enshrined in law through the Waste (England and Wales) Regulations 2011. Priority goes to preventing the creation of waste in the first place, followed by preparing waste for reuse, recycling and then recovery. Disposal—in landfill, for example—is regarded as the worst option.
Burning valuable resources loses them to the economy forever. For example, although our reliance on landfill has fallen over time to just 8% for all local authority-collected waste, our waste from household recycling rates have stagnated at about 45%, as I said earlier. This is because residual waste is simply being diverted to energy from waste. Our target ensures that we get waste up the waste hierarchy through reduce, reuse and recycle, and cuts the amount of residual waste we produce.
The noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, raised Newport; I see her Newport and raise her West Berkshire, where, when I was the leader of the opposition eons ago, a paltry amount was recycled—I think 15%. The excellent management of that local authority has seen that rise much higher than the national average, to nearly 60%, and it has just introduced a food recycling scheme which will take it above 70%—so there are good examples. The noble Baroness is absolutely right to raise the point that, very often, these matters cannot be run from the Secretary of State’s desk. There is a cultural issue in how we use waste, encourage people not to throw litter and tackle our sense of place and belief in community, protecting it from the worst ravages of a disposal society. There is a job to do locally, and local government is best placed to lead it. There are some fantastic examples as well as some laggards that we must get to move better and faster.
We have full confidence in the final suite of targets, which represents a robust analysis that has already been undertaken. The Environment Act established a robust legal framework to deliver environmental benefits and hold Governments—both now and in future—to account in delivering them.
Our record on the environment is strong: we have created or restored the equivalent of 364,000 football pitches of new habitat; restricted single-use plastics such as straws, stirrers and cotton buds; and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, said, cut the use of supermarket plastic bags by 97%. We have reduced waste sector emissions by nearly 40%, protected 1.5 million square miles of ocean and are leading international action to protect the environment as co-chair of the High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People and chair of the Global Ocean Alliance. I mention that because it is worth reminding ourselves that we sometimes get things right.
I hope I have covered all the points about major mineral wastes. These are inert materials from construction, demolition and excavation activity. Waste from critical raw materials is in scope of the targets for waste electricals. It is very important that they are not just seen as something we can bury alongside other waste. We want to make sure that we are tackling the reuse value that lies within them.
This target is ambitious yet achievable, with the planned collection and packaging reforms getting us roughly half way towards our target. A wide suite of policies is available to meet the remaining reduction required. These policy levers will be the decision of future Governments. Together with other government commitments, such as eliminating avoidable waste and doubling resource productivity by 2050, the target will drive down the amount of waste produced. This target, alongside the suite of Environment Act targets, will ensure that we meet our commitment to leave the environment in a better state than we found it.