Green Waste (Contamination)

Lord Benyon Excerpts

Wednesday 12th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Richard Benyon)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Sir Bob Russell) for raising this worthwhile subject. He shows why there is a need to achieve a balance between encouraging the recycling of waste of all types and securing protection for people, animals and the natural environment.

No one should challenge the idea that it is right to encourage the treatment of green waste to produce valuable compost or soil conditioner. We strongly support measures that encourage the recycling of green waste. Over the past 10 years we have invested about £7 million in helping to develop new markets for quality compost. The composting sector in the UK has grown tenfold in the past five years as European and national legislation has encouraged local authorities to collect biodegradable garden and kitchen waste for processing into useful products, rather than consigning it to landfill. Let us not forget that organic waste sent to landfill produces methane, which has strong climate change effects. Composting is now a key component of many local authorities’ waste strategies, as my hon. Friend pointed out, as they work to improve the sustainable management of their waste.

The demand for composted products has continued to increase. The industry turned over an estimated £226 million in 2008-09, 36% above the figure for 2007-08. Agriculture is the most important single market for compost, accepting 1.8 million tonnes of a total production of 2.8 million tonnes in 2010. Green compost, when produced to the right quality standard and used in the right way, benefits agriculture, particularly on arable—cropped—soils. It replaces fertilisers or the use of peat and other material, thus conserving natural resources.

However, we must ensure that compost is produced to the right quality standard. That starts by ensuring that we keep green waste separate from other waste and avoid the introduction of contaminants, be they physical ones, such as pieces of metal, or less obvious ones, such as oil, rubber and residues found in street sweepings from the public highway. We need to ensure that the composting process is carried out in an environmentally sound manner and does not result in the production of polluting leachate that escapes into water courses or odours that cause a nuisance for those living nearby. The Environmental Agency has an important role in regulating composting and other waste recovery operations.

As has been graphically described, we do not want contaminated waste spread on land. We have in place quality protocols that are supported by publicly available standards—PAS 100 for compost and PAS 110 for the digestate for anaerobic digestion. Those specifications allow only source-segregated biodegradable inputs, including biodegradable garden and kitchen wastes collected from households. The PAS 100 specifications include stringent limits on physical contaminants, such as metal, plastic and glass, that can be present in the finished composts. Those limits were revised down from a total of 0.5% of dry weight to 0.25% in 2011. They are now the toughest in Europe. If those standards are met, the output is considered to be completely recycled and is no longer subject to waste management controls. Producing waste to those standards helps producers to guarantee compost that is safe to be marketed or spread on agricultural land as a quality product and helps to improve confidence in composted materials among end users.

[Sir Bob Russell]

I must express disappointment at the Minister’s response so far. He is describing the theory, but the reality is what metal detecting enthusiasts from across England and their hobby group are telling me. What he describes is simply not happening out there in the field.

[Richard Benyon]

I think that the point I was coming to might answer my hon. Friend’s concerns. I will say now what I was going to say later: the Government are in absolutely no way complacent about this. We might have the most stringent standards in Europe, but we want to see that we are enforcing them. Having the most stringent standards is just a factor on a piece of paper; we are concerned with outcomes. I want to assure him that we will follow up any cases where we believe there has been a failure to comply with standards, and I will move on to explain how the principle that the polluter should pay will continue to be a key component of what we do.

Of course, not all compost needs to be produced to such a standard. Lower grade compost and compost-like outputs can be legitimately used on land, for example as mulch. In those cases, the compost remains a waste and its use on land is subject to environmental permitting or registered exemption controls in the same way as the composting process itself. That is monitored and closely enforced by the Environment Agency. We are aware of cases of sham recovery where, under the guise of composting, some operators have seemingly been more interested in disposing of unwanted materials than producing a worthwhile product. Where such cases are identified, the Environment Agency will investigate and consider enforcement action in accordance, importantly for my hon. Friend, with its enforcement and sanctions guidelines.

The controls on compost spread to land are in place, but we are keen to guard more generally against adverse impacts resulting from the spreading of a wider range of waste and non-waste materials on land. For this reason, officials in the Department and in the Environment Agency have set up a joint project to look at the impacts of other materials spread on land and whether we have the right controls in place. Nobody has total possession of all wisdom in this regard, and we are happy to take up any cases that we hear about from hon. Members, local authorities, or members of the public and organisations such as the one that my hon. Friend mentioned. In doing so, we will need to be absolutely clear about the rationale for any further intervention and avoid unnecessary or disproportionate regulation. We believe that there are sanctions in place that can deal with every one of the cases that he raises. If that is not happening, we as Ministers want to know why, and we look to him and others to provide cases that we can take up with the Environment Agency, which we will do with vigour.

[Tessa Munt (Wells) (LD)]

Will the Minister consider the fact that it is possible to look at the outcome as opposed to the process and perhaps offer some facility for the Environment Agency to recognise the integrity of agricultural and food-producing land and to offer some protection for that land? We already protect water voles and all sorts of other things in a number of different ways. If we looked to the protection of the land, any offence on it could be worked against by the Environment Agency rather than trying to classify every assault on the land.

[Richard Benyon]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. What Government have to do is to create standards, and we do that in accordance, in the main, with European designations on such matters. However, that is a very prosaic and rather unambitious reason to do it. We also do it because we want to do so. We want to see a healthy environment. We want our food grown in a healthy way, and we want to be mindful of the health of the consumer and, of course, the impact on the environment. We are very concerned with outcomes, so we are genuinely worried when we hear such issues raised. As I said to my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester, we are in no way complacent. We take our responsibilities very seriously. We are absolutely desirous of having good outcomes from all the measures that are in place. Many people say that far too many regulations are imposed on our food-producing industry and that we need to try to rationalise them, but we do not do that at the expense of the health of our environment or the consumer.

We have covered a lot of ground in the remarks made by my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester and the intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for Wells (Tessa Munt). I understand the attraction of metal detecting as a hobby, because a lot of people in my constituency do it. It is not only a good way of getting out into the countryside and doing a worthwhile activity; it is part of our agenda of more people having access to the countryside. It is also, as my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester points out, a fantastic way of collecting and identifying some extraordinary artefacts. We have all heard some of the wonderful stories in recent years, especially in and around the ancient Roman city of Camulodunum, now of course Colchester. I appreciate the frustration of the members of the National Council for Metal Detecting and note its recent petition on the subject. I particularly note the concern of those in my hon. Friend’s constituency, and I agree that we cannot accept the inappropriate spreading of what is alleged to be green waste, or the wilful damage to our environment.

The Government have a fundamental duty to continue to support and encourage the recycling and recovery of waste so as to conserve natural resources. We also have a responsibility towards the established principle in modern society that the polluter pays. That is an important sanction against the kind of pollution that my hon. Friend has described, and I reaffirm that if he can bring us evidence of this kind of thing happening, perhaps from his contacts in the National Council for Metal Detecting, I can assure him that there will be no lack of will among Ministers or those in the Environment Agency to take up those cases.

I hope that I have managed to reassure my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester and the House that there are good regulatory systems in place, and sanctions that should be working. There are also quality protocols which, if complied with, can add immensely to helping our environment. Where they are not being complied with, the perpetrators can be punished.

Question put and agreed to.