The sound of broken promises

 

The failure to achieve UK-wide reform of waste and recycling services is a case study in back-sliding, incompetence and political amnesia.

Hear that silence? It’s the sound of the resources and waste strategy, which should have begun this year, not being implemented. What resources and waste strategy, you ask? Well, let’s go back to 2018, when Michael Gove was a bright-eyed, fresh-faced Defra secretary. Green issues were higher up the national agenda. Theresa May, as prime minister, had promised to “leave the environment in a better state than we found it”

Gove is a details person. The resources and waste strategy that he shepherded into being (Wales and Scotland had already implemented zero waste policies) was a well-thought-through plan to reform waste collection and recycling services in England. It had three main elements. Firstly, consistent collection would mean that all councils would recycle the same materials in the same way – glass of any colour, plastic pots, tubs and trays, paper and card, metal, including aluminium foil, green waste and food waste.

Secondly, under a more radical change called extended producer responsibility (EPR) the producers of the packaging that we generally throw away with little thought would pay for its collection and treatment by councils, rather than council taxes and government grants – a sum estimated nationally at £2.7bn. Under a ‘modulated’ system, they would pay lower fees for their packaging if it was easy to recycle. In 2022, business waste and litter, in England, were excluded from EPR.

Begun in Germany in the early 1990s, EPR is a brilliant idea. It gives brand holders – think Coca Cola, MacDonalds, Unilever – a fantastic incentive to wrap up their often extravagantly-packaged goodies with fewer materials and more recycled content, leading to reduced carbon emissions and less plastic being burned or landfilled and ending up in fishes’ stomachs.

A strand of the EU’s Green Deal, EPR promotes the waste hierarchy – reduce, re-use, recycle – and circular economies, in which fewer resources will need to be dug out of the ground, to make new things. The classic example of a circular economy for waste, is aluminium. It’s easy to melt down and re-use. If we recycle all of our drinks cans (which we are actually close to doing in the UK) we will need to mine and transport far less bauxite.

Brand holders and EPR

Large brand holders are surprisingly agnostic about the concept. In many cases, they are in favour. EPR reduces countries’ tax burdens and helps to save the planet. They can hardly oppose it. The idea is eventually going to catch on everywhere.

The third main element to the resources and waste strategy is a deposit return scheme (DRS). It will mean that consumers will be paid back a deposit, estimated at 20p, for each glass or plastic bottle or drinks can that they return. Again, it’s a great idea that is proving highly effective in increasing recycling rates in Scandinavia and parts of Germany. Revenue raised helps to pay for further collection and recycling infrastructure – a circle within a circle.

The strategy seems too good to be true, doesn’t it – the UK becoming an environmentally-responsible country well set on the path to net zero. Well, it is too good to be true. We have had four Defra secretaries since Michael Gove in 2018. One of them, Ranil Jayawardena, lasted for less than two months.

With each secretary, the resources and waste strategy has slipped further into the realms of impossibility – think Kate Winslet in Titanic gradually losing her grip on Leonardo DiCaprio, as he slides into the icy water of the Atlantic. In the war-ravaged context of 2023, it is becoming a chimera.

There are a few things that we can be positive about. To reduce single-use plastics, the government has levied a tax on plastic packaging with less than 30% recycled content. In November 2021, royal assent was given to a wide-ranging Environment Act. It legislates for consistent waste collection in England and sets timetables for DRS and EPR.

A strategy with no champion

You may not know about resources and waste strategy. There are several reasons. A lot has occupied politicians’ minds since 2018. We’ve had Covid, the fallout from Brexit, the war in Ukraine, the Liz Truss fiasco, the energy crunch and the cost-of-living crisis. And the government, preoccupied by its own survival, has suffered a teenage identity crisis, with its leadership positions on shuffle.

Most importantly, the strategy has not had the high-profile political champion that such a radical package needs – a Nye Bevan or a Michael Heseltine. Its main elements have proved to be an extremely hard sell. The Food and Drink Federation (FDF) has bitterly opposed EPR, saying that extra costs for food manufacturers will be handed on to consumers. Small drinks manufacturers say that adding an increased cost to their products, under DRS, will put them out of business. Recycling trade associations argue that DRS will reduce volumes and divert revenues from well-functioning municipal collection streams.

Consequently, essential consultations have been delayed and milestones and deadlines have slipped. Under the strategy’s original deadline, 2022 was to be a key year, with a national scheme administrator appointed. That did not happen, leading to speculation that the reforms may be scrapped. In January, came an announcement. EPR is now set to begin nationally in 2024 and DRS the following year, for England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Inevitably, suspicions linger that the full strategy may never see the light of day. Meanwhile, Wales and Scotland have been moving ahead at their own speeds. Wales benefits from the Well-being of Future Generations Act, which embeds the principle of sustainable development, carbon reduction and biodiversity across all areas of government.

While English local authorities hugely improved their recycling rates in the 2000s, most had stuck at 45% or less, before Covid which decreased recycling rates. Welsh councils have already achieved an average of 65%, which is the third highest rate in the world, and the target of the national waste and resources strategy. Consistent collection has become the norm in Wales, without the need for legislation.

The Scottish government is also more committed to waste reform than Westminster. On current plans, a DRS scheme will begin in Scotland in August, earlier than the rest of UK. Environment minister, Lord Benyon, has described this is a “ridiculous” move that will “create carnage”. He has predicted “bottle cruises” in which people travel south of the border to buy drinks at 50% less cost. Oh dear, what a mess.

Waste is a devolved issue but to achieve a national circular economy will require close co-operation between Westminster, Holyrood and Cardiff. There’s not much chance of that happening any time soon. The inability to deal with rubbish is the most basic indication of political failure. But this failure is not merely aesthetic, it’s about a lack of commitment to sustainability and human survival. Faltering environmental advances made under David Cameron, Theresa May and Boris Johnson, ‘the king of wind’, are now sliding into reverse.

Will Hatchett has been a journalist since 1986. He has written for the Guardian and the New Statesman and was editor of a weekly, then monthly magazine, Environmental Health News from 1998 until 2018. The views expressed here are purely his own