At Defra’s ‘World Without Waste’ day this October, Environment Secretary Hilary Benn outlined a vision of a zero waste Britain where 75 per cent of UK household waste is recycled or turned into energy within 10 years. He also announced a number of initiatives to achieve this target, including the creation of six new zero waste places around the UK, as well as a zero waste place standard to recognise areas going beyond national waste targets while also supporting them with grants for further development.

Mr Benn said: “We need to rethink how we view and treat waste in the UK... We must now work together to build a zero waste nation, where we reduce the resources we use, reuse and recycle all that we can and only landfill things that have absolutely no other use.”

The Local Government Association said it will cost an extra £1.1 billion over the next three years to put the new strategy in place, yet speaking at the same event, John Denham, Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, was blunt in his assertion that the outlook for public financing in this sector was bleak. Indeed, Steve Lee, CEO of CIWM, acknowledged that spending cuts are “pretty much inevitable” and said that local authorities are already reporting cuts of as much as seven per cent.

The onus, then, is on ‘more for less’ (recently confirmed as the theme of next year’s Futuresource conference and exhibition), and speaking after the World Without Waste event, Hilary Benn stressed the need “to do things more efficiently”.

Victoria Burgess, Street Scene Improvement and Development Manager at East Lindsey District Council, which topped last year’s local authority recycling league table, told delegates at the recent LARAC conference that because of the ‘more for less’ mantra, the future of waste ‘is not looking too rosy’. “We have got to think about the political will at the council,” she said. “Now it’s more about value for money.” She outlined new strategies the council hopes will offer such value, despite their impact on recycling performance: “If we suspend green waste collections for the four winter months, we will save £175,000 and reduce our recycling and composting rate by four per cent. That’s something we’re looking at right now.”

Certainly, all councils would do well to re-examine the efficiency of their recycling policies. May Gurney’s Environmental Services Director, Andy Bond, stressed the importance of cost efficiency in light of zero waste aspirations – especially since many new policies could see households sorting waste into up to six bins. “We’ve seen examples of local authorities investing in things like three bin systems, so their cost basis is quite high and their systems not cost effective,” he told Resource. Indeed, he noted that making the right choice with recycling systems is imperative in striving for zero waste in a ‘more for less’ capacity. “Investing in better collection methodologies can yield quite a large saving, maybe even millions of pounds, for the average local authority.”

It would seem that a recycling catch 22 exists: Efficient recycling would save councils money, but there is little money with which to make recycling more efficient. The demand for ramped up recycling is high but little money exists to implement it, yet without revised recycling policies Benn’s zero waste ambition is undoubtedly compromised.

However, echoing Benn’s sentiments of the need for behavioural change, Bond suggested that the key to ticking both zero waste and cost efficiency boxes is to reduce waste arisings: “Take packaging, for example. Cutting down on packaging would save local authorities loads of money because they’re not paying to collect it or dispose of it. It just isn’t there.”