Article reproduced, with kind permission, from the August 1999 issue of the "The Waste Manager". We have ways to make you recycle 75 per cent... but EfW isn't one of them

The European Commission's right hand has proposed that recycling targets be raised from 50 to 75 per cent, but it's left hand wants to remove energy-from-waste from the recovery options.
Robert Walker wants to know if Europe is having a laugh

Implementation of the Packaging Waste Directive is already proving to be an uphill struggle in the UK and now the European Commission has recently made two new proposals which could destroy the UK's chances of getting anywhere near what started out as laudable aims. Government figures for 1998, the first year when the recycling and recovery targets applied, showed that we had improved packaging recovery levels by only 2.4 percentage points, from 30 per cent to 32.4 per cent. The directive requires us to have raised the level of packaging recovery to 50 per cent in less than 18 months time.

Currently our reprocessing capacity is 1.8 million tonnes short of that needed to meet the directive targets. Allowing for growth of the packaging waste stream, by 2001 this will be a 2.1 million tonne shortfall. Given that we only recovered 3.3 million tonnes last year, making up this ground would be no mean feat.

On top of the worry of the immediate shortfall in capacity, by December 2000 the directive obliges the EU to set new targets for the five years from 2002-06 "with a view to substantially increasing them". Last month, the Commission proposed that the new targets be raised from 50 per cent to 75 per cent.

And to make you just give up trying, they are suggesting that energy-from-waste (EfW) should no longer count towards meeting the targets. This 75 per cent is proposed as a re-use and material recycling target (not to include reprocessing with the intention to produce a fuel, either directly or as the final outcome).

To put this in perspective, planned growth in reprocessing capacity should give us a total of 4.2 million tonnes capacity by 2001, reducing the shortfall to 900,000 tonnes. Of this growth, 30 per cent is expected in the EfW sector, raising capacity for incineration of packaging waste from 450,000 tonnes a year to 725,000. Apart from the 10 EfW plants already operating, there are currently three under construction, eight awaiting planning determination and many more plans being hatched.

The total capacity of all the planned projects - about 2.8 million tonnes - assumes that all goes well and the extra material reprocessing and energy recovery capacity can be financed and receives planning permission on time. The finance depends, to a greater extent for some facilities, on Packaging Recovery Note (PRN) revenue being forthcoming.

This in turn requires the obligated companies to (a) register and (b) discharge their recycling and recovery obligations with PRNs (or equivalent).

However, there is an unfortunate mis-match between the cost of complying, often six or seven figure sums, and the measly fines resulting from the first prosecutions: £150 plus costs in one and £750 plus costs in another. This all begins to smack of trying to go 10 rounds with Mike Tyson in his prime, having one hand tied behind your back, and doing it all for a 5Op bet.

My greatest concern is that making these targets so unattainable could jeopardise all the measured ambition of the targets in A Way With Waste and the finely balanced backing of the money men - the waste producers, whose attention and respect the waste management industry has only recently managed to attract.

If we were to revert to 'aspirational targets' without solid basis and any tangible means of attaining them, we would lose the commitment of waste-producing industry and become a laughing stock.

Most importantly, our Government must understand that this sort of proposal should be its greatest fear. This is the sort of proposal that could make even the most ardent supporters of recycling, recovery and progress in general want to throw in the towel. The Government's greatest allies are the waste management professionals in the private and public sectors who sell the recycling and recovery messages all day, every day. If they alienate them, they risk far more than a shiver down their spine every time anyone mentions 'aspirational targets'.

This issue is not isolated to packaging either. The question of whether EfW should count towards recovery targets or whether it should be considered a disposal option is hotting up in Europe. Ludwig Kramer, the head of the Commission's waste management unit, has led the debate and a Commission working paper is expected to be discussed by member state officials in September.

So what would it mean to the UK if energy recovery no longer counted towards the A Way With Waste targets? Well, we never stop hearing how we're bottom of the European recycling league, but of the 14 per cent municipal solid waste (MSW) recovery achieved in the UK, six per cent is by EfW. Fifty per cent of commercial and industrial waste has value recovered from it, 15 per cent by EfW.

So clearly when the waste strategy, landfill and packaging directives are asking us to make such strides to improve value recovery rates, it would be a major step in the wrong direction to count EfW out of the equation. Indeed, this would halve MSW recovery, knock a third off commercial and industrial waste recovery, and a seventh off packaging recovery.

What's more, at the moment we have one of the smallest EfW capacities in Europe, but if we develop anything like other European countries, we should see an enormous growth in EfW over the short-medium term and the decimation of our proud achievements would be even greater.

Despite projections that we may need as many as 165 new incinerators by 2020, a more short-term and conservative DETR projection is that EfW will grow from providing 13 per cent of packaging recovery in 1998 to 17 per cent by 2001. Cement kilns are the obvious ready-made solution to the immediate need for more EfW capacity, but this remains controversial.

So, could we meet the existing packaging targets at reasonable cost without EfW? Let alone the possible 75 per cent target from 2001? Should we even be asking such questions? Shouldn't we be promoting good practice and value recovery in the name of sustainability, instead of courting the possibility of consigning to landfill wastes which are more appropriate for EfW? This is quite apart from the technical arguments about the benefits of EfW, in certain circumstances, over recycling or re-use.

However, there may be some small comforts in that our Government doesn't seem likely to support the downgrading of EfW. And the proposed wording for the next review of Packaging Directive targets, for 2006-11, doesn't mention that they should necessarily be set higher.

Robert Walker is a consultant with Robert Long Consultancy Limited. The views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of RLCL.

THE WASTE MANAGER AUGUST 99

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