So, it’s the start of another year, and as usual, there is lots to do in the world of waste!
Let me first start by saying that I hope everyone had a lovely Christmas break. I know this is a very busy time of year for members, what with all of the additional material collected and disposed of over the festive period, Christmas tree collections and all of this whilst contending with poor weather conditions. Once again, I take my hat off to everyone in the waste industry who work exceptionally hard at this time of year.
So onwards and upwards, and the new year brings a new consultation! This time it is about WEEE, and there’s some really important and interesting proposals in there and I urge you all to read through it and respond. LARAC will be doing a response on behalf of its members, however and we also ran a webinar for LARAC members on this subject on 23rd January.
Key areas of interest to both collection and disposal authorities are the proposals for producers to fund collections of small and large WEEE from all households, and the requirement on retailers to offer free of charge take back schemes. These proposals need to take into account the consequences for Local Authorities, and although they appear on the face of it to be positive, issues such as; additional capacity for storage at HWRCs, confusion amongst residents if the LA isn’t the WEEE collection provider and whether there is enough reprocessing capacity with the UK to recycle this additional material, need to be considered.
The other important news item in January was the announcement of the Governments New Burdens funding for food waste services in England under Simpler Recycling. The letter announcing the amount that each Local Authority would receive was sent out to Chief Executives on January 9th, and took many people by surprise!
It is positive that Local Authorities have finally received this information, however, many Local Authorities that I have spoken to are either confused over how the amounts were calculated or felt that this was certainly nowhere near enough to cover their collection of food waste from every household in their area. In addition, Waste Disposal Authorities are very concerned that there is no funding available to them for the aspects of food waste that they have to deal with including the provision of additional transfer station space.
If you would like to appeal the amount you have been allocated, then you need to contact DEFRA on this email recycling@defra.gov.uk confirming why you calculate the allocation is insufficient for your authority and providing evidence to support your request. You should contact Defra as soon as possible so that Defra can consider the evidence you have supporting your case.
