Forum topic: HM Government legally challenged on incineration

Adrian Day asks, “what about recycling in Enfield”. I guess I’d say must do better but it’s not particularly out of line with London, itself noticeably worse than the UK and we’re all missing the relevant target. (London suffers fewer gardens, more flats and a higher transient population, all relative barriers to achievement.) After early year’s progress, and not least a big uplift from garden waste, everywhere is essentially flat lining meaning something fundamentally different for UK waste is now required if things are to improve.
Enfield does recycling differently to the other 6 north London councils – it does not route our recyclate through the NLWA and manages its own RRC (Barrowell Green). That’s been assumed as a financially better approach for ratepayers – missing out the NLWA middleman on the way to merchants – but I don’t have recent figures.
Where it possibly gets intriguing is Enfield’s 65-75% recycling rate by mid-2030’s (for 2040) assumed in the recent climate plan. That’s a timescale beyond any of the NLWP, the Joint Waste Strategy, the Mayors Environmental Strategy or the draft London Plan, and so their particular targets. It’s not out of line with any of them and so hopefully implies a continuation of the anticipated rising trend they all have at core, presumably from a theme I posted previously concerning the circular economy and ARUPs work for the GLA and its potential for fundamental change. It’s something Enfield along with all others would piggy back on.
The current longest term target is the mayors minimum 65% requirement for municipal waste; that’s a mix of Local Authority collected waste (LACW) – mostly household, but also some trade and others such as road sweepings and those old mattresses you can often see by the roadside – and Commercial and Industrial waste (C&I)). Processing of these two streams is increasingly similar and so they are now being targeted as one. Enfield, as with all London, is currently desperately short versus that target.
One possible alternate view, because the climate plan is not specific in its wording, is that it (correctly for a climate plan?) relates to all of Enfield’s generated waste. LACW is the little brother of several other waste streams and possibly the ambition refers to some weighted average of them all. Excavation (E) has very high recycling (90+% beneficial reuse?), Commercial and Demolition (CD) currently at 93% recycling, and C&I currently at 44% recycling and targeted at 75% by 2030. So that would fit. (NB London numbers, borough specific ones are not easily available.)
But it’s LACW and C&I levels where it gets really interesting for the incinerator, the current hot topic. With population forecasts still very much upwards but per capita waste going downwards (actuals), or assumed at a one-off 5% drop (London Plan forecasts), or assumed flat (NLWA forecasts), what does that mean for future waste levels? Add in the complexity of recycling levels on the absolute levels of residual waste remaining in our future circular economy– being left with 25% of a lot is still a lot but 25% of not a lot is a whole lot less – and you’re already looking at a pretty complex scenario against which you have to consider building fixed, long term plant, to process it. Or of course having some alternate cunning plan for getting rid of the waste we produce, both now and also then.
So it’s fair to say that recycling levels have really significant consequences and at an average of 15% of all council tax bills (apparently) waste and its management is anything but a little problem to leave in the background. Looking forward we need both manufacturing/ design process change as well as personal behavioural change, Enfield and everywhere else.