The Local Government Association (LGA) has published its response to Defra’s consultations on its environmental targets for the Environment Act 2021, stressing the need for clear implementation plans with interim targets in order for broader goals to be met.
The response, giving detailed responses for targets in five key areas, provides potential improvements for Defra to take on board and better support Local Authorities (LAs) as the Act comes into effect.
In some areas, such as Water, Air Quality, and Biodiversity, the LGA calls for a better level of ambition, whereas other targets, like that which addresses nutrient pollution in river catchment areas, express investment into acute and wider health and economic challenges.
Overall, the LGA praises the Government’s focus on long-term environmental targets, but also calls for sustainable sources of funding and the embedding of targets across all Government functions to ensure these targets are met.
Recommendations on Resource Efficiency and Waste Reduction targets
Addressing Resource Efficiency and Waste Reduction, the Government aims to reduce residual waste, excluding major mineral waste, by 50 per cent by 2042 from 2019 levels, estimated to be 560 kg per capita. In particular, it is exploring how it will measure this as a ratio of economic output in monetary value to raw material consumption, determined by material weight.
The LGA has expressed its disagreement with this target, crediting Defra’s exclusion of major mineral waste in this reduction. Pointing to the 84 million tonnes of construction and demolition waste generated each year in the UK, the LGA acknowledges it is a lack of data motivating Defra to exclude mineral waste from this target, utimately urging that this gap be addressed.
The body agrees with the method of measurement proposed for this target, highlighting how a measurement per capita allowed for progress to be tracked over time. Exploring the choice of measurement further, the LGA suggests more consideration on the Government’s part of whether this is best done by person or by household, as many councils base their waste data on the latter.
Regarding local authority (LA) waste data, the LGA shares its disagreement with the proposed legal requirement for LAs to report waste data. Referring LA’s existing data reporting requirements for national statistics, the body highlights the need for Defra to streamline data collection systems and reduce the burden on councils to support the implementation of Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) for packaging.
That being said, the body approves of the level of ambition reached by Defra in its 50 per cent reduction target. However, it expresses the need for the Government to revise its strategy in order to meet this goal. It also highlights waste prevention and reduction as an area Defra is not paying enough attention to, stressing that a focus only on bettering LA recycling will not effectively achieve this.
The LGA states that it cannot yet make a valid judgement on the Government’s proposed metric for considering resource productivity, asserting that: ‘Defra’s thinking is at an early stage and there is not enough information for the LGA to be able to comment. However, they recommend Defra propose some interim targets for this that can be easily measured.
Concluding its commentary, the body expresses support for all measures proposed: EPR schemes, eco-design measures on producers, and better information on consumers. To further its goals, the LGA recommends that Defra puts more pressure on reducing reliance on scarce natural resources, for example, rolling out support for organisations to rely on rental services for their material procurement.
Enforcement of The Environment Act 2021
Defra commenced consultation on the targets in March 2022, with this coming to a close at the end of June. In particular, the body looked for responses from a diverse range of sectors to secure broad and effective strategies.
Consultations began soon after The Environment Act 2021 was made an Act of Parliament in November 2021, requiring the Government to lay out goals in five main areas; water; biodiversity; air quality; resource efficiency and waste reduction; fine particulate matter and species abundance. As the Act further demands Defra to set targets for areas subject to the greatest problems, it has also set out targets for marine and woodland cover.
According to the legislation, these targets will be enforced by the newly minted Office for Environmental Protection (OEP), to which governmental and public bodies will report.
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