The UK Government must introduce an incineration levy to help tackle the “UK’s waste crisis”, says former government adviser.
Richard Waite, the specialist advisor to the House of Commons Environment Select Committee during their 1993/94 inquiry into recycling, called for the tax in his book Rethinking the Concept of Waste and Mass Consumption.
Waite argues that a landfill-tax-style tariff on the industrial burning of household rubbish would increase the uptake of recycling, recovery and repair of discarded materials.
The UK Government is currently analysing feedback from a consultation on expanding the UK Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) to include waste incineration and energy-from-waste (EfW) from 2028.
Waite said: “When I was first working in this field, landfill disposal was so cheap that it was very difficult for local authorities to implement recycling or recovery schemes as they were so much more expensive than landfill.
“This situation only changed when the government introduced the Landfill Tax as a way of artificially increasing the cost of landfill, to make recycling and recovery more financially viable.
Waste disposal authorities have gone down the EfW incineration route as the least cost option.
He argues that the Landfill Tax has had the unintended consequence of making EfW incineration more competitive with landfill.
In some cases, some materials, such as plastics, are less expensive to incinerate than they are to recycle, Waite claims.
“Consequently, waste disposal authorities have gone down the EfW incineration route as the least cost option,” he said.
“This needs to be addressed and the blindingly obvious conclusion is that we now need the UK governments to impose an Incineration Tax, at least on Household Waste.”
Waite also called for a “much simpler” system of household waste collection where residents would have three containers for mixed “dry” recyclables, residual waste, which are emptied fortnightly, and a food waste bin emptied weekly.
Capacity would be increased for plants that can separate and recycle “dry” materials such as cardboard, he suggested.
