The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has published its latest evidence plan, which is used to ‘set out current and future evidence needs and how these align to policy outcomes’ for England and Wales.

The ‘Waste & Resources Evidence Plan’ for 2013/14 to 2017/18 describes the government’s desired ‘policy outcomes’ in relation to the waste and resources industry covering three ‘key’ areas. These are:

• resource and waste management contributing to sustainable economic growth;
• a reduction in the harmful impacts of resource use and waste on human health and the environment;
• households and businesses being satisfied with their resource and waste services.

Defra states that ‘robust evidence’ is needed in order to support these aims. The plan reads: ‘As the resource management sector continues to evolve, the policy that underpins this transformation will be highly dependent on more complete and regularly updated information on the flows and fates of materials through the economy, life-cycle analysis of products and continued investigation of economic and environmental impacts.

‘Social research into individual behaviours has featured in our work on waste prevention but we now need to explore the wider societal and political-economic context.’

In order to aid this process, Defra will utilise a ‘multi-disciplinary approach’ using a team of ‘scientists, economists and statisticians, with access to social and operational research expertise... to inform where government intervention can be targeted to best achieve policy objectives’.

Future evidence needs

However, the report identifies several areas in which evidence gathering could be improved in order to better support the desired policy outcomes. These are divided into general improvements and specific improvements for each of the three areas. The general improvements include, among other things:

• projecting trends and further analyzing the long-term relationships between waste and economic growth;
• tracking waste flows in domestic and export markets, and improving understanding of the economics and efficiencies associated with different waste systems;
• investigating key perceptions, attitudes and drivers of public and business behaviour on waste and resources, including the role of civil society, for example to different types of waste, prevention, recovery, disposal, risk, infrastructure and new technologies; and
• exploring the cost effectiveness of options to reduce food and other biodegradable waste to landfill, moving them up the waste hierarchy.

According to the report, evidence gathering relating to how resource and waste management contribute to economic growth could be enhanced by improving understanding of the packaging waste supply chain, analysing the biodegradable nature of waste going to landfill and devising ways of pushing waste up the waste hierarchy.

Evidence gathering when it comes to reducing the harmful effects of resource use and waste could be improved by gaining a better understanding of the outcomes of key policy drivers such as the EU’s revised Waste Framework Directive. In addition to this, the scope of waste crime such as illegal shipments of waste and contaminated materials needs to be gauged.

Finally, Defra states it needs to determine the extent to which enforcement measures result in behavioural change, as well as exploring which waste collection services result in higher levels of satisfaction whilst also promoting waste prevention, reuse and recycling.

Required action

Once its evidence gathering process has been improved, Defra states it aims to take the following actions to meet each of its three main goals:

Resource and waste management contributing to sustainable economic growth

Although the two are at times seen as mutually exclusive, Lord De Mauley recently stated his belief that improving the environment and ensuring economic growth can go ‘hand in hand’. This is the stance taken by Defra in its evidence plan, where it lists the following as key tasks for achieving this policy outcome:

• developing a national waste prevention plan;
• reducing and sustainably managing food and packaging waste in the hospitality and food service sector;
• ‘optimising’ the energy from waste role in the waste hierarchy;
• driving selected waste streams from landfill and moving waste streams up the waste hierarchy;
• supporting the operation of the UK recycling market.

Reduce the harmful impacts of resource use and waste on human health and the environment

This element of the evidence plan consists of the following:

• forming and delivering a waste infrastructure policy;
• implementing a revised Waste Framework Directive;
• ensuring environmental protection through the environmental permitting regime for waste, as well as removing unnecessary burdens;
• ensuring compliance with the Basel Convention, waste shipment regulations, ship recycling and the implementation of the Hazardous Waste Strategy;
• improving regulation of the sector; and
• reducing the volume of single use carrier bags;

England remains the only member of the UK not to have imposed a plastic bag levy, despite growing calls for such a policy to be implemented. When such levies were introduced in Wales and the Republic of Ireland they led to a drop in plastic bag usage by between 70 and 96 per cent in Wales and 90 per cent in Ireland.

Households and businesses being satisfied with their resource and waste services

This area includes:

• ensuring local authority waste services and procurement are ‘effective and efficient’; and
• providing high quality services to local authorities and small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

‘The aim is to achieve less waste’

Defra says: ‘Our evidence programme reflects the prominence of economic growth and environmental objectives in the rationale for waste policy interventions, the need for better evidence-based interventions further up the waste hierarchy and the delivery of improved customer service.

‘The aim is to achieve less waste as well as improve resource management techniques that contribute to sustainable economic growth.'

The document continues: ‘Our most significant and urgent evidence challenge is the generation of robust estimates on the prevention, flow and fate of different waste material streams across the economy’.

It goes on to say that it is working with a range of bodies, including the Environment Agency, to improve its data provision and that it feels this cooperative approach can help build the overall knowledge base.

Read Defra’s ‘Waste & Resources Evidence Plan’.