Recycling reforms deadline put back to 2024

The Government’s Spending Review this week said little directly about waste and recycling, but noted that Defra had the resources to “progress with extended producer responsibility (EPR) for packaging waste, introduce a deposit return scheme (DRS) and implement consistent collection of waste – including food waste – in every local authority in England by the end of this Parliament”.

Parliament would end in 2024 unless prime minster Boris Johnson called an earlier general election. Some the Bill’s measures had previously been signalled as taking effect in 2023 but the Government has given itself some leeway.

Defra has been awarded a £400m increase in resources for the coming year, taking its total spending next year to £5.8bn.

The associated National Infrastructure Strategy also came out this week, which did not list any specific sector projects but said as a general policy: “The UK also needs to go further in increasing its resource-use efficiency, to reduce the burden placed on the natural world through the supply of raw materials and absorbing waste.”

It said EPR for packaging, a DRS and consistent collections would all help to  “increase resource-use efficiency and cut greenhouse gas emissions from their implementation in 2024”. 

Tracking waste movement would be particularly important, the strategy said, and “new waste tracking technology in the UK is the future of a high-tech circular economy underpinned by world-class digital infrastructure” and would inform future infrastructure investment.

The Chartered Institution of Wastes Management (CIWM) said the National Infrastructure Strategy’s alignment of infrastructure planning and the net zero agenda was “a significant step forward, along with commitments on clean economic growth and job creation”. 

But it said there was no clear vision for the future of waste infrastructure. The CIWM remained concerned that the Government and the National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) continued to underestimate the importance of waste infrastructure in protecting public health and the environment, as a service for the economy and its potential contribution to supporting industry decarbonisation, job creation and ‘levelling-up’.  

The NIC’s infrastructure resilience report earlier this year excluded waste, saying: “The solid waste sector generally has longer timescales between hazard emergence and service impact and has less interdependency with other infrastructure sectors.” 

Pat Jennings, CIWM head of policy, knowledge and external affairs, said: “This assumption has been thoroughly disproved by the Covid-19 pandemic.

“The CIWM would welcome the opportunity to work with Government and NIC to ensure that future infrastructure planning reflects and strengthens the role of the resources and waste sector in supporting a sustainable green recovery and the delivery of longer term UK-wide environmental protection, resource productivity and net zero ambitions.”

John Scanlon, chief executive of Suez Recycling and Recovery UK, said: “The Spending Review and National Infrastructure Strategy both demonstrate Government’s determination to press ahead with the reform of the recycling and materials recovery systems needed so that our industry and manufacturers can mobilise the billions of pounds the Government envisages for the country to achieve greater circularity.”

Scanlon said the industry was ready to invest in the transition planning, infrastructure and technological innovation needed to deliver these ambitions, and “help us all move from a make-use-dispose culture to a more circular model for all the materials we manufacture and consume”.

Miles Roberts, group chief executive at DS Smith, said: “Building back better is the only way to approach spending post Covid-19, [but] we are concerned that the money committed is not enough to achieve the Government’s ambitious objectives.”

Roberts feared that Government support for decarbonising heat-intensive industries was too low, and said the £500m announced last week for hydrogen and low-carbon initiatives was “only a fraction of the German government’s recently announced hydrogen investment of €9bn (£8bn)”. 

He said the Government should exceed the funding level seen in Germany because “businesses like ours are committed to bringing about sustainable change, but we can only do so much without the right levels of support”.

UK Steel director general Gareth Stace said: “Promised spending on decarbonisation has the potential to help the steel sector on its road to net-zero but, worryingly, there is again no detail on measures to provide cost-competitive electricity prices for the sector that will fundamentally underpin this transition.”

Stace said that funding for carbon price compensation comes to an end this year and that, without renewal, costs would rise by some £30m.