LAWR

COMMENT 4 Local Authority Waste & Recycling February 2014 Getting in a bit of a pickle 1993- 2013 Our container lids are manufactured to be more durable and to last longer than others on the market, and they also help protect your containers from weather damage. This means you save money all round. Our lids can be fitted during refurbishment or bought separately. Order yours now! Call 01257 476076 or email info@fairportcontainers.co.uk www.fairportcontainers.co.uk cost-effective A couple of weeks ago, Communities Secretary Eric Pickles released his 'bin bible' to try and convince councils to promote weekly rubbish collections. It caused controversy and was published in the Telegraph and Daily Mail before its main release on the Department for Communities and Local Government's website (well, it actually appeared on the website on Boxing Day and was later retracted). Nothing new here, but waste collection stories have been out of the limelight for a while and elections are round the corner. Surely, if local authorities were interested in changing from alternate weekly collections to weekly ones they would have done so by now. So, this just seems like a 'vote-appeal' announcement. Should councils be concerned by this? After all this has been going on for some time. Will this 'bin bible' convince local authorities to switch their services back from fortnightly to weekly collections? Who knows! Tell us, what you think by writing in or commenting on Twitter. By demonising fortnightly weekly collections, householders may start to think that they are the root of all evil. If you hear something often enough it can become a self-fulfilling prophesy. If things do change and the public starts to turn against fortnightly collections then local authorities may face some stark choices about what services they run, what materials they collect and how they collect them. How will Defra react? Will they come to the defence of councils in the long run, even though this will draw the argument further into the political arena? The debate needs to be balanced and it is up to industry to put the story straight. This time of the year is traditionally gloomy (post-Christmas, pre-spring), but here at LAWR there are many reasons to be cheerful. We take a look at how councils managed to provide normal waste/recycling services to their residents as parts of the south east faced terrible flooding last month. Elsewhere, the biggest single issue facing the sector seems to be the EU Waste Framework Directive requirement for separate collection of recyclables by the beginning of 2015. Key to ensuring the success of this is the definition of 'separately collected' within the context of TEEP (Technically, Environmentally and Economically Practicable). LRS Consultancy managing director Dee Moloney analyses this subject and aims to give you guidance on it. I hope you'll find much to enjoy elsewhere in this issue, and take the time to be kind to yourself if the weather is cruel. Liz Gyekye, Editor Follow me on Twitter: @LAWR_editor NEWS February 2014 Local Authority Waste & Recycling 5 FOR MORE NEWS AND ANALYSIS VISIT www.edie.net /waste Defra staff survey Less than a third of staff working at Defra have confidence in decisions made by their managers, according to a departmental staff survey. The results have been published in Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee (EFRA)'s Departmental Annual Report 2012-13. Search 'Cuts' Shanks sells sold waste ops Waste management firm Shanks Group has confirmed that it has sold its UK solid waste business to rival firm Biffa for £9.5m. The group's solid waste business collects, sorts and processes commercial and industrial waste in the UK. Search 'Shanks' EMERGE Recycling expands in north west Social enterprise EMERGE Recycling has acquired Green Reaper Recycling for an undisclosed sum as it looks to expand its operations in the north west. Based in east Manchester, EMERGE Recycling, was set up in 1996 to provide a range of recycling and refuse services to businesses and schools across Greater Manchester. It employs 28 staff. Search 'Emerge' Revised waste standard Business standards company BSI has revised its waste resource management specification to help firms divert waste from landfill and reduce their costs. It was first published in 2009. Search 'BSI' Online Exclusives edieWaste Helping people make business sustainable The CIWM has accused Communities Secretary Eric Pickles for chasing headlines rather than providing a policy framework that supports councils, following the publication of his 'bin Bible' guidance. Pickles issued a so-called "bin bible" to try to stop councils from axing weekly rubbish collections last month. The Communities Secretary said the new guidance for local authorities exposes the false claims made by council "bin barons" to justify scaling back services. Speaking about the document, CIWM chief executive Steve Lee said: "It is insulting in its use of provocative terms such as 'lazy' and 'idle' to describe councils who have moved to fortnightly (or alternate weekly) collections. It is misleading in its assertions over the cost of waste management collection and disposal, which may be a small proportion of the average council tax bill but represents the third largest area of spend for local authorities. "It ignores a Government estimate that the cost to local authorities of a wholescale move from alternate to weekly collection 'would be in the region of £140 million in the first year, and £530 million over the period of the Spending Review'. And it deliberately overlooks the fact that variable frequency collections have been running successfully for well over a decade, helping over 50% of councils to provide better value for money, to invest in improvements to recycling provision, and to encourage residents to reduce their residual waste." Sita external affairs director Gev Eduljee also treated the document with dismay. In a blog on the topic, he said: "In my view, the response of professional and trade bodies to date has actually been mystifyingly polite. Firstly, the document doesn't provide 'guidance … on how councils can and should deliver weekly rubbish collections'. It is a highly skewed and self- fulfilling compilation of local authority experiences, selected solely from the 82 recipients of the £250 million weekly collection support scheme." CIWM slams Pickles over guidance on rubbish collections Government urged to create 'super Wrap' Waste industry heavyweight Peter Jones has called on the Government to create a super WRAP body that will bring all the main environmental departments together to help generate value from waste and bring leadership on driving investment in renewable energy. His comments were aired when he gave evidence to the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee on 7 January. The Committee was examining opportunities in stimulating a bio- economy for the UK. Jones, who is chairman of energy firm Waste2Tricity, said that a 'super WRAP' (Waste & Resources Action Programme) could focus leading a cross departmental body which could assist in cutting through the "extant blockages slowing down UK progress to a true resource efficient economy". He asserted that there was an uncoordinated framework in the UK at the moment. He said different government departments – including the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills (BIS), Defra, the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG)and the Department of Energy & Climate Change (DECC) – currently had responsibilities for different areas of the waste and energy sector, which was causing "conflicting economic signals" and is a "paralysis" which is "taking us nowhere". Jones said the issue of material flows (input and output of biomass material) was immensely complex. But he said that organisations like WRAP have a track record in analysing data in this area and make "bold" making initiatives. However, he also said: "They are not liked universally. They are seen by the consultancy market as being an arm of Government that sometimes should climb back into a narrower box." Jones explained to the Committee: "I am naive enough to think that we might be able to establish a single, core entity to get a grip on this cross-departmental area where none of the individual departments sees this back-end economy – this immense waste of resources – as a key issue." He said that an equivalent of a super WRAP bringing together the views of research bodies, the investment community and supply chains could assist in speeding up the UK's progress towards a resource efficient economy. He also said the creation of a super WRAP could involve triangulating the views of research bodies such as the Technology Strategy Board (TSB), Knowledge Transfer Network and communications with the four Government departments (BIS, Defra, DECC, DCLG). To read the full stories go to www.edie.net/waste

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