Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps her Department is taking to support local authorities to reduce the amount of municipal waste sent to landfill.

We set an ambition in our Resources and Waste Strategy to send less than 10% of municipal waste to landfill by 2035. As a result of active diversion of municipal waste from landfill over the last two decades, only 8.1% of local authority collected waste was sent to landfill in 2021/22. This equates to a 90% reduction by weight since 2000/01 when 79% of municipal waste was sent to landfill.

To reduce this further, in line with the commitment in the Net Zero Strategy, we are exploring options for the near elimination of biodegradable waste to landfill from 2028 – we issued a call for evidence on this in May and will publish our Government response and more information in due course. We are also working towards eliminating all food waste being sent to landfill by 2030.

To support this, through powers in the Environment Act 2021 we will require all local authorities in England to arrange for the separate collection of food waste from households and provide them with the new burdens funding to do so.

Our plans for Extended Producer Responsibility for packaging will also play a key part in making it easier for householders to recycle and reduce the amount of waste sent for landfill, moving the full cost of dealing with packaging waste from households, including collection and disposal, away from local taxpayers and councils to the packaging producers under the ‘polluter pays principle’. This will encourage producers to reduce their use of packaging and use packaging which is easier to recycle.

The Waste Infrastructure Delivery Programme was established in 2006 to support local authorities to accelerate the building of infrastructure needed to treat residual waste, minimise municipal waste going to landfill, and increase recycling. This is a £3 billion programme of 25-year grants for 27 local authorities (now 23: two completed and two where the grant has been withdrawn) ending in 2042 when the last grant payment will be made. This continued support provided to local authorities has provided modern, efficient waste management facilities, enabling England to meet its 2020 landfill diversion targets. The long-term waste PFI grants were a major contributing factor to our delivery against these landfill targets, acting as a catalyst to invigorate the waste infrastructure market.