The Audit Commission’s new report, Well Disposed: Responding to the Waste Challenge, has both good and bad news for local authorities. The good news: councils have quadrupled recycling rates in the last 10 years and are on target to meet the EU-imposed goal of reducing landfilled biodegradable waste to 75 per cent of 1995 levels by 2010. The bad news: unless councils push ahead with plans for often-controversial disposal technologies, they will miss the 2013 target (of reducing landfill waste to 50 per cent of 1995 levels) and incur fines totalling millions of pounds.

According to the report, composting and recycling on their own cannot divert the required amount of waste from landfill and, therefore, other forms of waste disposal, notably incineration, will be needed to achieve the targets and avoid the fines. Michael O’Higgins, Chairman of the Audit Commission, said: “You only have to look in your own bin to see that not everything you throw away can be recycled, so we’ve got to find somewhere other than landfill to put it. We must keep up the pressure to reduce, reuse and recycle, but if we are to avoid being heavily fined for failing to meet the 2013 target then we must also push ahead with the treatment plants that are in the pipeline.”

A disposal infrastructure involving thirty new treatment facilities that can recover energy from waste (EfW) is needed to meet all the targets, according to the report, which identifies 46 confirmed or possible projects in the works, nearly 60 per cent of which involve burning waste. If these schemes are delayed by just one year, the UK will exceed its 2013 landfill allocation by one per cent; if they’re delayed by two years, the UK will miss the target by 13 per cent and the resulting £140-million fine will be passed on to taxpayers. Multi-million pound plants to handle municipal waste of any composition can take 10 years or more to complete, and so plants that are only in the planning stage now will have no impact on the 2013 target.

The report does not indicate that incineration should be pursued to the exclusion of all other treatment options, though, and highlights anaerobic digestion and mechanical biological treatment as other technologies equally worthy of investment. It also instructs local authorities to consider the massive investments EfW plants require carefully (albeit quickly), as few councils generate enough waste to justify an incinerator for their own use alone, and, moreover, “long term investment decisions may be proved obsolete by adoption of more advanced technologies or by changes in regulation or public opinion”.

Somewhat surprisingly, the UK Without Incineration Network (UK WIN) welcomed the publication, claiming the report “shows incineration is not needed” and that “there are many positive messages to take away from this report”. UK WIN says the Audit Commission’s recognition that it is possible to over-invest in disposal infrastructure and its assertion that 70 per cent of waste is “readily recyclable” supports the anti-incineration campaign (although the report goes on to note: “There will be a point where promoting further recycling becomes less cost effective, especially where the disposal method recovers energy that can be sold”).

Defra praised the report, saying: “The Audit Commission is absolutely right… maximising the renewable energy that can be recovered from unavoidable waste, through incineration and other means such as anaerobic digestion, is both sensible and vital to cut landfill.”

Paul Bettison, Environment Board Chairman at the Local Government Association, pointed out that this could be quite a task, however, given that “government has hit the council tax payer with a £1.5 billion bill by going back on its undertaking to refund money raised through landfill tax”.

He added: “This is cash that could have been used to build the facilities that are needed to divert waste away from landfill.”