The Waste Review - another rapture moment?

Julian Kirby

20 June 2011

I think something momentous was supposed to happen last week. The prophets at Defra had been predicting some sort of revelation: The Coming of the Waste Review. Sigh, must have got the date wrong.

So, what did you make of it in the end then? Odds are, if this is an issue you pay much attention to, you'll have been very disappointed. I say that because over the week since the much anticipated publication of the yearlong Review last Tuesday I've struggled to find anyone willing to praise it. Instead it's been savaged, and from all corners at that.

The bitterest mauling, predictably, came from those who had lobbied the Conservatives pre-election to force councils to reinstate weekly 'black bag' rubbish collections. Communities Secretary Eric Pickles had weighed in heavily - and well beyond his brief - against councils that have moved to fortnightly collections. He accused them of wielding the 'iron fist of the municipal state' against the Englishman whose 'right' it is to have his 'chicken tikka masala collected weekly.' In the end Pickles was left with masala on his face after the Government decided it could not afford the hundreds of millions of pounds necessary to pay for councils reverting to weekly collections, which are more expensive and reduce recycling rates anyway.

So, that was good news, for councils, taxpayers and people who care about getting recycling rates up. I'd almost be tempted to praise Defra Secretary Caroline Spelman for winning the day if it wasn't such a crackpot, time-wasting idea to have had to argue over in the first place. On the plus side,  there is allegedly some money earmarked to help councils adopt weekly food waste collections.  This will  help generate genuinely renewable energy-from-waste through anaerobic digestion - rotting the food in an airtight vessel and collecting the resultant methane for heating, transport or electricity generation.

It's a shame so much hysteria had been whipped up about weekly vs fortnightly waste collections, particularly given that all the evidence is that there is no hygiene risk associated with fortnightly collections. But still greater shame is that this hysteria masked the real story of the Waste Review, which is just how howlingly, mind-bogglingly bereft of any good, let alone new, ideas, policies and ambitions it was.

Indeed whoever wrote the Defra Business Plan must be feeling a bit like Harold Camping because not only did they get the date of the 'end of the Waste Review' wrong - the original May publication date quietly morphed into June - but the prophesied 'goals' didn't show at all.

And not only was the Review an ambition-free zone, it appears to have fallen down a wormhole and woken up to find time running backwards. The future of England's waste policy includes

• a commitment to consult on raising the packaging recycling targets, the rise of which this Government froze last year (to the consternation of industry and greens alike, including the Tory architect of the scheme Lord Deben);
• a commitment to consult on banning the landfilling of wood, with a review of the evidence for banning the landfilling of other recyclable materials - this takes us back three or four years to the research stage of the last landfill bans consultation which recommended the adoption of such bans, only to be dumped by the new Coalition Government last summer;
• begrudging acceptance by Defra that England will have to do its bit to help the UK meet the 2020 50% recycling target mandated under EU law - though it's unclear whether the 2007 Waste Strategy's 50% by 2020 target for England still exists, or if England's "greenest government ever" could rely on the considerably greater recycling ambitions of Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland to pull us over the EU target.

Well at least they're good at recycling something.

The Waste Review document is an embarrassment. It's an embarrassment, I hope, that is felt right across and right to the top of Government, because sorting our waste problem would create tens of thousands of jobs, save councils and businesses billions, and maybe convince a few people that Cameron meant it when he hugged those huskies. In fact it's hard to think what boxes an ambitious sustainable waste policy doesn't tick for a 'green' government on a cost-cutting drive.

So as you head out for the summer's festivals and fetes and pass those multi-coloured bins with tottering towers of cans and paper cups, consider that the Government seems not the least bothered if we only ever manage to recycle half of that lot, burying and burning the rest. Now that stinks.