Higher national recycling targets for household waste and stronger support for energy-from-waste schemes form the backbone of the government's revised view on the waste hierarchy.

Within today's major consultation on its long-term waste strategy, Defra said it believes councils could "comfortably" exceed the recycling targets set for England six years ago in the Waste Strategy 2000 document.

It has suggested raising national targets to 40% household waste recycling by 2010, 45% by 2015 and 50% by 2020.

Defra has also proposed municipal waste recovery targets (which includes the recovery of energy from waste as well as recycling) of 53% by 2010, 67% by 2015 and 75% by 2020.

The government wants to establish a "recycling culture" to tackle the 2010, 2013 and 2020 landfill diversion targets of the European Landfill Directive, targets it calls "very challenging but achievable".

Municipal solid waste arisings are predicted to rise from 29.1 million tonnes in 2003/04 to as much as 41 million tonnes by 2019/2020 on current trends. As a result, the government wants local authorities to take the lead in waste reduction, recycling and recovery measures.

Recycling

While Defra said there was not "sufficient information and evidence" to set waste prevention targets, the move to increase recycling targets came after widespread disappointment with an original proposal by Defra to keep recycling targets static (see letsrecycle.com story).

Councils in England are currently recycling 22.9% of household waste (2004/05 figure). Disposal authorities already have strict landfill targets for biodegradable waste under the Landfill Allowance Trading Scheme (see this report). Under the Waste Strategy 2006, councils could be set new statutory recycling targets to go alongside LATS – targets that would affect collection authorities as well as the 121 disposal authorities in England.

The main possibilities for new council recycling targets set out by Defra are:

• Material-specific recycling targets. These would see councils forced to put in place separate recycling collections for various common household materials. Defra believes they could complement the LATS scheme, but highlights concerns previously raised by local authorities that material-specific targets could shift producer responsibility costs onto the local taxpayer.
• Waste reduction targets. These would attempt to address the "perverse incentive" that councils currently have to collect more waste than they did before attempting to meet weight-based recycling targets. Defra argues that reduction targets could be more cost effective than current recycling targets, but worries that possible waste reduction measures could be limited, and reduction targets difficult to deliver.
• Minimum recycling performance targets only. Rather than setting all councils with specific recycling targets, Defra has suggested adopting a country-wide 25% target by 2010 and 30% in 2015 for all councils to achieve. This would give flexibility to councils, but Defra warns that it would not achieve national targets alone.
• Special arrangements in two-tier areas. Defra also suggests allowing partnerships of councils in English counties, where collection and disposal responsibilities are split between county and district level, to deliver jointly an overall recycling target.

Recovery

Alongside possible new recycling demands, Defra's waste strategy consultation provides stronger support for the recovery of energy from waste. It states that using individual waste streams to make fuel, to generate electricity through incineration or using mechanical biological treatment to turn mixed waste into refuse-derived fuels "presents a significant opportunity for energy policy".

Highlighting benefits for energy policy and dismissing health concerns under new European emission controls, Defra did warn that to reduce the impact of energy-from-waste plants on the need to recycle, "it is essential that EfW should be set in a context of bother greater emphasis on waste prevention and more ambitious recycling targets."

Should the proposed municipal recovery targets be met, the Department estimated that the energy recovery would be "unlikely to account for more than 27% of municipal waste by 2020" – but the proportion represents a significant increase on the 9% incineration rate currently seen in England.

Landfill

Under the Landfill Directive, England is already to ban the landfilling of whole and shredded tyres from July 2006 and the landfilling of all liquid wastes from October 2007. All waste is also to be treated before landfilling to further reduce the amount and hazardous nature of the waste from October 2007.

With its waste strategy consultation, Defra said it thought it was "too early" to take steps to match other EU countries in banning specific materials or products from landfill or steps to ban landfill altogether. But, it said similar steps "could be taken here in future".