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Ministers have stepped back from efforts to encourage people to recycle their rubbish just as growth in recycling rates in England has plateaued, MPs have said.
Householders are still confused over what can and cannot be recycled and only a quarter of them recycle waste correctly, they said.
Publishing its report on waste management on Wednesday, the environment, food and rural affairs committee said the government needed to take the lead in increasing the rate of recycling and cutting the amount of rubbish thrown in landfill. The average person in England throws away five times their body weight a year, adding up to 22.6m tons of household waste annually.
On becoming waste minister, Dan Rogerson told the industry last November there would be “reductions to our activities” and that from April this year the Department for Food, Rural Affairs and the Environment (Defra) would be “stepping back in areas where businesses are better placed to act and there is no clear market failure”.
But MPs on the committee said the stall in recycling rates – which were at 12.5% in 2001 and grew significantly each year before stopping at 43% in 2011 and rising by just 0.2 percentage points the following year – showed there was a need for greater, not less, government intervention. Under an EU targets, households must recycle 50% by 2020, and potentially up to 70% by 2030.
“We need government to step in and pick up the pieces if needs be,” said Anne McIntosh, the committee’s chair. “Obviously I’m very much in favour of the market but where we seem to have been slow in this country is in recognising waste as a resource; it’s an economic commodity.
“There well may be a time when government can stand back, but at such an early stage, when we could be missing opportunities and councils need guidance, the evidence we heard is that Defra should take a lead role.”
Keep Britain Tidy told the committee it was “deeply concerned” by Defra’s reduced role on waste, and waste management company SITA UK said it was “premature [for Defra to step back], not least because of the uncertainty as to whether England will meet all of its EU obligations by 2020.”
Liz Goodwin, CEO of Wrap, Defra’s waste programme, told the MPs there was a “significant risk that we will not reach [2020 target]” and that the growth in recycling rates “looks as though it has plateaued at the moment.”
The government admitted in its own report last November that the 2020 target is likely to be missed at current rates, saying “the rate of increase in the last year is insufficient to meet the 50% EU target by 2020.”
The committee also highlighted confusion over what people could recycle, which it says is exacerbated by there being 400 different waste schemes in England, meaning people have to learn them afresh every time they move or go on holiday.
The report said that energy-from-waste plants were not incompatible with high recycling rates. “We need a debate,” said McIntosh, who is the Tory MP for Thirsk, Malton and Filey, where she said seismic testing to consider potential fracking for shale gas is under way.
“How are we going to get rid of our waste? How are we going to find alternative sources of energy?What would you prefer – unsightly fracking wells with thousands of lorries trundling around with waste water or would you prefer to take energy from waste, where you’re both disposing of the waste and you’re both fuelling and heating.”
The committee said a minister should be appointed to tackle the issue of waste management across government departments, and England should emulate Wales by implementing statutory targets for local authorities as a way to boost recycling rates. The average household recycling in Wales is 54%, almost ten percentage points higher than in England.
Barry Gardiner, shadow minister for the natural environment, said: “This report is clear that the market failure around waste management is undermining the UK’s economy. Labour will address this by delivering a review of resource security and by giving borrowing powers to the Green Investment Bank.”
A Defra spokeswoman said: “We are committed to recycling 50% of our household waste by 2020 - the significant progress we’ve made over the past ten years reflects a great deal of hard work by local authorities and a desire from householders to recycle more.
“We continue to support local authorities’ efforts to promote recycling and are working with WRAP to see what more we can do and what further measures may be needed to achieve this.
“We will respond to the report in due course.”
