Audit Committee, 26 Sep 2007

Meeting date: Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Official Report 193KB pdf

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“Sustainable waste management”

For agenda item 4, I invite the Auditor General to brief the committee on his report on sustainable waste management.

Thank you, convener. I invite David Pia, who is the director of public reporting and who led on this study, to introduce the report to the committee.

Thank you, convener. Last week we published "Sustainable waste management"; the report was done jointly for the Auditor General and the Accounts Commission because of the shared responsibility of central Government and local authorities for waste management policy.

Managing waste is a major policy issue throughout the world and there are commonly agreed objectives: to reduce the amount of waste produced, to recycle where possible and to minimise the amount sent to landfill.

Our national policy is driven by the European Union landfill directive of 1999, which set targets for member states to reduce the amount of waste sent to landfill. The directive was backed by the possibility of financial sanctions against member states that did not achieve the targets. Since then, investment in waste management has grown rapidly. For example, over the past few years funding through the strategic waste fund—which was set up specifically to pursue those targets—has risen from £3 million in 2000-01 to £89 million in 2005-06. Some £200 million extra has been invested in waste management over those years.

Our report examines progress in managing household waste in Scotland in recent years and how well the Government, councils and other bodies are improving waste management to meet the landfill directive targets. I will briefly run through the report's main findings.

First, significant progress has been made in meeting interim recycling targets. The percentage of waste that is recycled and composted has increased from 7 to 25 per cent in the past five years. However, rates of recycling and composting vary considerably among councils. Those variations reflect factors such as the number of high-rise dwellings and travel distances in rural areas. Four out of five people now participate in recycling schemes.

There is a reasonable chance that we will meet the 2010 target for reducing landfill, but it is less likely that we will meet the 2013 targets. Those targets will be difficult because of the continued growth in the amount of waste that is generated, the lack of facilities for treating waste and the cost of continuing to increase recycling levels beyond current levels.

Over the past few years, the Government and councils have been slow to develop facilities to treat waste and there were early delays in getting things going. There has been a lack of organisational capacity within councils and within the then Scottish Executive to deliver the required changes.

The costs are rising, but they need to keep rising if the targets are to be achieved. The annual expenditure that councils require to meet landfill directive targets will need to grow from £350 million in 2005-06 to an estimated £580 million in 2019-20.

Our report points out that, if we are to achieve the targets, urgent decisions need to be made about how we balance waste minimisation, recycling levels and waste treatment. Decisions will also need to be made about how that will be funded.

The report discusses a number of key aspects of waste management. On the many and varied methods of collection, we suggest that further evaluation is required to find out which is the most effective method. We also consider the arguments about different forms of waste treatment and the pros and cons of those. We discuss aspects of the movement of recycled materials around the world. We also discuss waste prevention campaigns, home composting and community recycling.

The report's 20 recommendations, which are addressed to the Scottish Government and councils, include a recommendation that the Government and councils should together urgently develop an action plan to show the milestones in the process for achieving the 2010, 2013 and 2020 landfill directive targets. We recommend that the Scottish Government should publish an annual report on progress on waste reduction. We recommend that an evaluation should be done of the different forms of kerbside collection. We also recommend that more efficient forms of procurement of waste treatment facilities should be developed.

Finally, I want to mention a point that was highlighted in media coverage following the publication of our report. We did not recommend the introduction of charging for waste collection; we recommended that the Government and councils should undertake research to assess the contribution that direct charging might make. Our report notes that other countries that send much smaller amounts of waste to landfill provide for local authorities to charge. We also note that bodies such as the Chartered Institution of Wastes Management and the Local Government Association in England have supported the piloting of charging for waste collection. We recognise that such a policy would be controversial and that it would have potential disadvantages. However, given Scotland's poor record to date on waste management, we believe that there should be an appraisal of the pros and cons of charging.

That is all that I will say by way of introduction. Along with my colleagues in the team that produced the report—Mark Diffley, Kirsty Whyte and John Lincoln—I am happy to help with any questions.

There is no doubt that we face significant challenges in waste management—not just the legal and regulatory imperatives that we face but the huge environmental issues that, as a society, we have a duty to address. It is encouraging that in a relatively short time we have made the progress that you noted in your report. Credit has to be given to those responsible for that. There has been central Government intervention and a willingness at local authority level to take on the challenge. It is clear from what you are saying that much more needs to be done; the question is what needs to be done.

The committee will discuss in private what we want to do, but it would be useful if we could tease out some issues and ask you some questions. You said that there are a range of methods of collection throughout the country and that you have even found different methods of collection in one local authority area. Have you given that any more thought? We are a relatively small country. Some authorities are perhaps constrained by being fairly small.

On planning, it is clear that to some extent we have to cope with the results of the way in which we have governed ourselves over many years. In looking forward, should we do something about the layout and design of buildings and estates to make it easier for households to recycle waste and for those responsible to collect it? You mentioned some of the difficulties in high-rises or areas of denser population. It strikes me that if we want to have joined-up government, perhaps we should consider all that in a more coherent way.

You asked first about kerbside collection. We describe how all sorts of methods of collection have developed, sometimes even within council areas. We recommend that those methods be evaluated to identify what is most effective and what is best value for money. That is our general position. I will ask John Lincoln if he wants to add anything on the detail of the evidence to date.

You also asked about environmental planning, which is a big issue on which we did not really focus. Mark Diffley might have something to add about that.

On the question about kerbside collections, we found 67 different types of recycling schemes throughout Scotland. Our general response is that that seems too many. As David Pia said, we did not find any evidence of a systematic evaluation of those schemes, so we recommend that such an evaluation is done and that the best practice that it reveals is taken forward to standardise or rationalise the variety of schemes out there.

We say quite a lot about giving credit for the fact that more than 25 per cent of waste is now recycled or composted, but we are acutely aware that, for the reasons that you identified, it will become increasingly difficult to make the further increases that are necessary to meet our recycling targets. Less recycling is happening in many rural areas and it is clear that there are not sufficiently good arrangements for people who live in tenements to recycle. It is not a case of our saying that, given that the amount that we recycle has increased from 7 to 25 per cent over four years, we can continue to progress. It will become progressively more difficult to increase recycling rates as we get to the more difficult areas, because the easy hits have already been made.

We recognise that several different types of schemes and separate collections will be necessary to meet the needs of different properties: for example, tenements need a different type of collection from estates and rural areas. One of the advantages of reducing the numbers of schemes and bringing in standardisation, however, is that councils could work together—joint working is on the agenda at the moment. Another advantage of standardisation is that councils can look at that as part of their option appraisals for best value. If councils want to market test the services, it is much more attractive if the systems are all fairly similar and can be brought together. Currently, we find that even councils that are adjacent to one another have systems that are not always compatible.

The Audit Scotland report refers to slow progress being made in developing facilities to treat waste. Can you expand on that, and let us know the reasons? Was that a resources issue; was it to do with lack of advance planning; or were there delays—for example, in the planning system—that held up the development of facilities?

There are a number of reasons. In 2003, when the then Executive and the Scottish Environment Protection Agency published the national waste plan—there were also a number of area waste plans for 11 groupings of councils throughout Scotland—they asked councils to produce implementation plans to move forward not only on recycling, but on providing facilities to deal with residual waste. One or two councils put forward schemes to do that, but because of the

"lack of organisational capacity within councils and the Executive"

that we mention in the report, bringing in the recycling schemes to achieve the interim target and introducing the facilities for residual waste were perhaps too much to take on at once. The Executive and the councils then focused more on increasing recycling in order to achieve the 2006 target of 25 per cent, which they did. That created a delay to a certain extent in introducing facilities to treat the waste that is not recycled.

The Executive then asked the councils to work together in groupings, which were based on the area waste groups, to produce outline cases for plans to deal with residual waste. They were asked in March 2006 to produce those outline cases, with the aim of a decision in September 2006, but no decisions have been made until now. It is difficult to get councils to work together in that way. There are difficult decisions to be made, as there is a large expense involved in putting together the plans. The Executive wanted to take the time to get those controversial decisions right, which led to further delays.

In March this year, the then Executive made two decisions about the bids from the Lothian and Borders group and the Lanarkshire group. Those groups have been asked to produce final bids by September, and a decision might be made then. Making the big and difficult decisions involved has taken a long time. Once the plans have been commissioned, it will take a long time—about a minimum of six years—to get planning permission, to get bidders and then to develop the facilities. That means that, in the case of a lot of the plans, we are too late to achieve the 2013 targets.

We are all aware from our own areas how controversial planning applications for incinerators can be, and I am sure that the delay is partly due to identifying sites and getting them through the planning process.

What would be the consequence of not meeting the 2013 target, which, as you have indicated, is likely?

It is very difficult to say. As it is a United Kingdom-wide target, it depends on what happens in the rest of the UK—and, to some extent, on what happens in the EU. It is very difficult to predict the political situation in seven years' time.

We point out in the report that the sanction for not meeting the landfill directive target is a fine. However, for the reasons that John Lincoln set out, we are unable to say at this stage how much that fine is likely to be.

How will that sanction operate? Will the UK Government be fined?

Yes.

So, in a sense, there is no direct incentive on the Administration here, as others will have to pay the bill.

Responsibility for meeting the UK target has been devolved, which means that each devolved Administration in the UK has its own target. The Scottish Government, for example, has its own target, which contributes to the overall UK target. If all the devolved Administrations meet their targets, the UK should meet its target.

So culpability will be levelled at the UK, rather than at Scotland.

That is right. However, as we have no experience to draw on, we simply do not know how the sanction will be implemented and whether, for example, some charge will be passed to Scotland.

I know that EU machinery grinds slowly, but the EU must have given some indication of how it will fine people. Are there any precedents in that respect, or does it simply make a lot of noise about sanctions without actually delivering on them? Is the fine a serious threat, or is it something that might or might not materialise in 2013?

We are not aware of what will happen with these targets or how any related sanctions will be implemented.

So it is a trailer of forthcoming attractions.

The situation with the national waste plan shows a serious lack of co-ordination between central Government and local government. You also highlighted a lack of organisational capacity in councils and the Executive. What would it take to solve either or both problems?

We have recommended that, instead of having a system in which councils prepare individual cases and separately implement each element of the infrastructure, the Government, councils and other interested parties should consider forming a national team to implement the required infrastructure. In that way, individual authorities or authorities working in groups of four or five will not have to face the learning curve separately. Once the team has taken one authority through the process of putting together bids and implementing infrastructure, it can move on to the next. Such an approach would help to build a level of expertise, and the Scottish Government has indicated that it will look at it.

So it is a matter of building capability. Would such an approach require major investment from local authorities and central Government, or would it be a much lesser and more easily achievable exercise?

We have identified a relative lack of skills, experience and knowledge that has been increasing over the past few years; increasingly, there is also recognition at the centre of the need to consolidate those aspects. People have very much learned about all this on the job, but because the policy is complex to develop and implement, it requires a range of skills and experience, from technical knowledge of the different approaches to dealing with waste through to expertise in procurement, monitoring, information collection and so on.

It is about co-ordination, gathering together existing capabilities and using them better.

Yes.

Definitely.

I am probably the only person in the room who remembers the pig bins that sat outside closes and into which people put their kitchen waste. Someone then collected the waste and fed it to pigs, so that pork tasted like pork and bacon tasted like bacon. Perhaps that is another story.

You are saying clearly that there is good practice but that no one is telling anyone else about it in the way in which they should, and that councils are not talking to one another. I take Andrew Welsh's point about the relationship between Government and councils and accept that some money may need to be spent. You said that there were 67 different schemes for collecting and getting rid of waste. The Convention of Scottish Local Authorities should look closely at that issue. If it is a costly exercise, putting councils together might create economies of scale. I am not sure whether that is happening in COSLA. Is it happening only every now and again, when the Government says that something should be done about the matter because there are targets to meet, or does COSLA regard the issue as important? I do not know whether it is dealing with it at all.

We did not come across any evidence of COSLA's co-ordinating role. However, when we were preparing the report we were attracted to the point that you make about economies of scale, which John Lincoln, David Pia and I have mentioned.

There is a small COSLA waste group, but the Scottish Government has had regular meetings with councils. There was one such meeting in March or April, which considered how Scotland could achieve 50 per cent recycling. Once or twice a year the Executive and councils get together with other interested parties to talk about the evidence.

Is that done through COSLA, or does the Executive invite certain councils in?

As I indicated, the Executive invited all councils to a one-day workshop to look at the issue of recycling. It does that periodically.

We can consider whether we want to put questions to both central and local administrations. Further to what Andrew Welsh said, I do not get the impression that money is the only issue. Some local authorities may struggle because of their small size. We may need to ask the Government to take a more hands-on approach. We will come back to that issue.

Trish Godman made a point about pig bins. I think that such bins were responsible for starting the 2001 foot-and-mouth outbreak, so we will probably not go back to them.

My question is about fines. You say that there is no precedent on the matter, that the UK would be fined and that the UK Government would probably take the Scottish part of the fine from Scotland. I presume that the Scottish Government would seek to get that money back from local authorities, depending on how they had performed. Is that what you envisage happening?

We suggested that several times, but we do not know how the system would work. The report points out that some local authorities have already been fined for exceeding their landfill allowances, which is a separate issue from the European Union landfill directive. In that sense, there is some precedent for local authorities footing the bill for missing targets but we honestly do not know how that would operate as far as the landfill directive target is concerned.

I have a few points. The first concerns the recommendations on page 42 of the report. Those in paragraphs 180, 183, 188 and 193 are some of the most important for helping to achieve the ultimate objective. Secondly, exhibit 23 on page 36 mentions underspend in the strategic waste fund. Do you have any indication as to why there has been such an underspend?

The general answer is that the underspend is the result of delays in progressing plans as intended. We have said a little about the delays. My colleagues might like to add something further about them.

Sometimes it simply took longer than originally envisaged for councils to implement recycling schemes, or for bids from councils to the fund to be agreed.

My second point concerns how staff in local authorities and the Executive of the time worked together—or did not work together. Exhibit 5 on page 11 is a chart that shows the percentage of municipal waste sent to landfill in EU nations and in Scotland. Has there been any indication of local authorities or the previous Executive bringing in outside expertise to try to encourage a reduction in the amount that we send to landfill or to show a way forward to such a reduction? I have studied in three European countries—France, Germany and Sweden—which are a lot better than Scotland and the UK in that regard. Has bringing in outside expertise been considered?

Are you asking why other countries are so far ahead?

I am asking about using the expertise that already exists.

In other countries?

Yes. Have we considered bringing in expertise to show us the way to better methods of waste disposal?

Councils have certainly considered bringing in expertise from Remade Scotland, which is based in Glasgow Caledonian University and provides expertise for putting together bids to the Executive as well as advice on recycling schemes—it has a lot of information on that. When introducing recycling schemes, councils have also used the Scottish waste awareness group to help publicise them and increase public awareness about them. That seems to work quite well.

Councils have also tended to bring in consultants from the private sector to advise on putting together bids for dealing with residual waste. There have also been one or two Executive-sponsored visits to Europe to look at facilities that deal with residual waste.

There is a tendency to bring in some outside expertise.

Do you know exactly how much outside expertise has been brought in and how much has been spent on that? The likes of Sweden are far ahead of Scotland and the UK. We must examine countries such as Sweden, which are much more successful at not sending waste to landfill, to find out what we are doing wrong. We must implement the best practice from outside Scotland and the UK.

We agree. We highlight in the report a few reasons why we have traditionally relied on sending waste to landfill, whereas other countries have done that less, as can be seen from exhibit 5. Some reasons are cost and the fact that sending waste to landfill is traditionally what we have done. We agree that there are things to learn from other countries. That was not the focus of the report, but it is a fair point.

The figures in exhibit 5 are for 2003, which was the latest date for which comparable figures were available. The gap is not as large now. Part of the explanation is historical—Scandinavian countries and northern European countries got into waste management way ahead of many other European countries. As we say in relation to Scotland, once we start to invest, much headway can be made quickly into building recycling levels. However, after the easy gains have been made, continuing to make progress is challenging. We are reaching that stage now.

Therefore, an opportunity may exist to engage even more with northern European nations, to develop matters further. I accept that larger inroads can be made initially, after which progress slows.

That is right. We try to tease out in the report the key challenge, which is the question of how much more we can recycle and at what cost, given that recycling will become progressively more expensive as collecting recyclable materials becomes harder, as we said. That is set against how we treat the other materials that we collect that go to landfill and what facilities we need to treat them. Those are the key high-level big questions that came out of our study. Exhibit 5 highlights how far behind other countries we are.

I will ask about the waste-to-energy schemes that are mentioned on page 18. The nice table on that page shows that such schemes are contributing significantly to reducing the use of landfill in four council areas. Do those schemes involve incinerators?

Under the energy-from-waste schemes, waste is burned to produce energy in the form of electricity. The scheme in Shetland also produces hot water to heat local houses. That is not the same as simple incineration.

An obvious opportunity exists to develop that idea, because its contribution to reducing the use of landfill is immense. What are the barriers to establishing more schemes? If incinerators were involved, I presume that there would be some public resistance. Page 17 mentions cost barriers to achieving approval for such schemes, so perhaps more work can be done on the costs of such schemes, which could contribute further to reducing the use of landfill.

David Pia mentioned the idea that the Government and councils could consider the impact of a charging scheme. Did Audit Scotland consider the alternative of incentivising, rather than charging, the public? I am sure that most of the public would say that they already pay for the uplift of waste from their houses through council tax, so why should they pay any more, thank you very much? What about an incentive scheme that would reward the public at their doorstep for a reduction in waste volume that they leave at the kerbside?

I will answer your first question about barriers. You are right to highlight the perceived public resistance and not-in-my-backyard approach to energy-from-waste plants. If that is the route that the Government decides to go down, really big decisions must be made about how many plants we need and where and how big they need to be. Such decisions are also affected by how much we think that we can recycle, which will have a direct effect on how much waste we need to treat through energy-from-waste plants. The cost of building them also has an impact. We highlight in the report the differences between the cost of increasing recycling and the cost of treating waste through energy-from-waste plants, although I am aware that that is only one aspect of what we are looking at.

The second question was about charging. As David Pia mentioned in his introduction, we make a passing reference to charging in the report. We say that we were aware of the pros and cons of charging, but we did not look into the area in detail. In response to your questions about incentives, we do not have any evidence either way to support such an approach.

We did not examine charging because it does not happen in Scotland. We look at what happens in Scotland but, if we become aware of them, we draw attention to things in other places that might be worth looking at. That is precisely what we say in the report about charging. The argument for charging is that it is an incentive to recycle—people can lower the charge that they pay if they put out less waste. However, it is a complex area, which is why we recommend that it is examined.

We highlighted some secondary, tentative evidence on charging from England, which was that charging encouraged people to recycle more. However, we drew no firm conclusions from that evidence.

I reiterate that we are looking at what is happening in Scotland—that is the objective of the report.

My question is about waste minimisation. I note from the report that increasing costs are associated with increasing recycling rates. What evidence have you found of good practice in waste minimisation? As a mother who has used real nappies, I appreciate that there are things that the individual can do to contribute to waste minimisation. Who should be doing more to support waste minimisation?

We looked at community schemes to encourage waste minimisation—for example, schemes that give people who need it furniture that would otherwise go to landfill or schemes that put together furniture starter packs for people who are moving into housing. However, many of the measures to do with waste minimisation are concerned with reducing the use of packaging in supermarkets. The Courtauld commitment on packaging is UK wide. Many packaging issues affect UK-wide companies, such as Asda and Tesco, and such companies have made commitments on waste minimisation.

In Scotland, the Executive has put together a waste minimisation plan that includes a number of points, such as asking councils to reduce the amount of waste that they send to landfill. There is a fair bit going on, but not all of it relates to what happens in Scotland.

In some ways, as much prioritisation must be given to waste minimisation as is given to recycling. Many people now accept the responsibility to recycle, but the same is not true for waste minimisation.

That is right. Our report points out that the issue has not been addressed to the extent that recycling has. We would pretty much agree with that point.

Some parts of the country have had sporadic consumer action to highlight the issue, with people ripping off useless packaging in supermarkets and trying to force the supermarkets to do something. Perhaps consumers in Scotland might start to take some direct action to force those who inflict useless packaging on us to do something about it.

Page 13 of the report states that, typically, 28.1 per cent of waste is food and garden waste. However, a significant amount of home composting takes place. How can we account for food and garden waste that is composted at home and so not picked up by lorries or services?

We cannot really measure that, as it happens in people's homes. However, we found that when councils introduce separate collections for garden waste to try to improve the amount of composting, that acts to an extent as a disincentive to home composting. We want incentives for home composting. It is difficult to measure waste that does not go out, if you see what I mean.

Is there a guesstimate of the amount of waste that is home composted? Including that in the figures for Scotland would obviously help.

I am not aware of any estimates of the amount of home composting. Measures are available, such as the number of composting bins that councils have issued, which has increased in the past few years. I do not have those figures with me, but I will provide them. However, once the councils have either sold or given home composting bins to residents, there is no way of knowing how much they are used.

It seems perverse that many local authorities charge householders for a composting bin. If home composting made the contribution that some people say it makes to minimising the amount of waste that goes to landfill, one would think that councils would supply composting bins for free. Was there any discussion about why authorities think that charging for the provision of such bins is an aid to recycling?

There was no discussion of that within the team. The only discussion was with people in local authorities. One person said that they felt that if people have to buy something, they value and use it more than they do if they get it for free. However, that is only one person's view.

A highly paid official, no doubt, but never mind.

To clarify, that means that none of the home composting schemes goes toward helping the landfill directive figures.

Home composting will do that if it reduces the amount of biodegradable waste that goes in the bin. We do not know the amount of home composting but, if it increases, it will help the waste figures, because that waste will not go in the bin.

Would it be useful to have a survey by local authority area to get voluntary information from home composters to help with the figures?

Yes.

Do you have any information about fly-tipping? One of the worries about charging for waste collection is that it might lead to fly-tipping, especially in rural areas surrounding cities. Did you get any evidence about fly-tipping and an increase in the level of it?

No. As I said, we did not really consider charging. We highlighted the common concern about charging that it could lead to an increase in fly-tipping, but we did not consider the issue in any great detail.

It remains a major problem.

Yes.

We have given the issue fairly good consideration. We will decide what action to take on the report under agenda item 7.