ePolitix.com Stakeholders comment on the environment secretary's waste strategy.

David Miliband has published proposals for a scheme to reward households for recycling and charge those who do not.

Party Response: Liberal Democrats

Liberal Democrat environment spokesman Chris Huhne said: "This is too little and too late. The government’s 50 per cent recycling target for 2020 does not even match the best current standards in Europe such as Germany’s 58 per cent and the Netherlands’ 65 per cent.

"We have the third worst recycling rate in the EU, and ministers are still far too unambitious.

"We need a right to return excessive packaging at retailers, trials of a plastic bag charge plus more prosecutions for excessive waste and fly-tipping.

"We oppose new waste tax powers for local councils, but would welcome schemes which give rebates on council tax for residents who recycle. We don’t need 'pay as you throw', but councils should be able to give 'rebates as you recycle'."

Stakeholder Response: Biffa

To send Biffa a response click here

A spokesman said: "This is a significant improvement on 2000 with far greater emphasis on hard targets, and a number of poorly performing local authorities will be shaken to the core by the sharp upward twist in the Diversion percentages.

"There is also a healthy emphasis on the carbon footprint associated with the changeover from landfill to new technologies with positive recognition that energy from (innovative) waste technologies has a part to plat-an issued mirrored in yesterdays energy strategy and response to the Biomass Working Group recommendations in relation to renewables.

"Cutting through the ludicrous miasma of quasi legal and bureaucratic newspeak on waste definitions is also helpful if the Environment Agency are given the teeth to tackle the freeloaders who seek to exploit loopholes.

"This touches on the significant gap which is now desperately essential if the expectation revolves around targets/traded permits/compliance and finding the freeloaders - I refer of course to the need for an online data capture framework predicated on all those with waste licences being obliged to report inputs and outputs of material passing through their hands together with confirmation of where it has come from or sent to.

"As the 'value' of waste rises so will the attractions to illegal operators and the exhortations to invest will be blunted. Resource flow data is still handled like money flows were before the foundation of the Bank of England in the early 19th century with no cohesive reconciliation of inputs and outputs in a standardised double entry system.

"Given the hype around household collections and charging there is also a curious silence on the fact that waste collection and disposal is still only around 1.5 per cent of the cost of local government and that needs to move to around 2.5 per cent by 2010. But the efforts to better integrate over the 400-odd bodies involved in defining how waste is removed from our backdoors (and possibly charged for differently) is to be applauded.

"Gordon Brown has laid the foundation for much of these targets of course - the £8 escalator in Landfill Tax each year (nigh on tripling the previous rate) will escalate the floor price for the newer technologies waiting in the wings.

"With investment tax write-offs acting as a 'pull' effect the waste sector will move to new technologies with comfort as to their bankability - even to the point where public sector PFI schemes could become superfluous as merchant plants open to all comers in much the same way that landfills did 25 years ago."

Stakeholder Response: CPI

The CPI said: "Quantities of paper recovered from the UK waste stream have risen dramatically since the initial waste strategy was introduced but quality, particularly from the household sector, has been diminishing.

"Quality is the bedrock of sustainability through recycling and CPI felt that the strategy was a real opportunity to imbed this in everyone's thinking; unfortunately there is little evidence in the document.

"We have concerns with the target for a quarter of household waste to have energy recovered from it by 2020. Clean, uncontaminated waste paper is readily recyclable and gives carbon benefits when reprocessed; it should not therefore go for energy recovery.

"However if the material is contaminated through poor collection methodology this could potentially overcome the re-usable or recyclable statement within the strategy and make this stream suitable for energy recovery.

"There is little mention of the development of end markets for the recyclables which would be collected in meeting the strategy targets.

"For instance the UK is currently collecting over eight million tonnes of recovered paper per annum with over 50 per cent of this being exported (the majority to the Far East) as we have a declining domestic reprocessing capacity.

"Increased recovery of paper will inevitably require increased exports in the short term unless government can help attract investment in UK reprocessing.

"Incentivising recycling by households is a worthy proposition in line with the producer pays principles but issues must be addressed to make this option workable.

"Charging for residual waste, or discounting recycling, has inherent risks if householders try to minimise the cost of their waste management.

"To reduce individual costs householders may include non recyclable items in their recycling bins pushing their responsibilities further up the recycling chain.

"To stop this it would be critical for the collection operator to spot this and prevent it at source.

"This would add a high degree of responsibility to the operator and would be made more difficult should the recyclables be collected in large wheelie bins where non recyclables could be hidden at the bottom."