Green Bill of Health

Protests over incineration are really starting to annoy me. Whether it’s placard holders at planned sites or raised eyebrows in client meetings when I announce that Paper Round, now collects waste for incineration; Incineration is still a dirty word.

The incineration argument has been misdirected as it is continually being pitched against recycling when it should actually be against landfill. I do strongly believe that recycling rates need to do be raised dramatically but I’m also realistic that even if we do achieve targets set out in EU directives that we will still be producing a large amount of non-recyclable waste that needs to be dealt with effectively.

The much more pressing problem is that the UK is still sending 65% of its waste to landfill, whose pollution may not be as conspicuous as an incinerator but is bad news nonetheless due to the amount of methane it produces – a greenhouse gas twenty times more powerful than carbon dioxide. Modern Energy from Waste (EfW) facilities on the other hand are now put through rigorous testing to dramatically reduce emissions, while turning unusable waste into a fuel source.

The suggestion that waste companies favour incineration over recycling, however, makes no sense at all because recycling is still way ahead of incineration environmentally and financially. If a council or waste company sends waste to landfill or incineration they have to pay for disposal whereas if they take it to a recycling plant they will make money. So it makes complete sense to achieve maximum recycling rates both at the front end the scheme by educating those recycling and as it goes to the plant to insure pure materials.

I think we need to look at how some of our European neighbours manage to combine incineration with enviably high recycling rates to help us achieve an effective and more sustainable solution to our waste disposal.

As the economic downturn continues to grip office procurement budgets, I’m seeing more and more businesses opt for the cheaper service of mixed or comingled recycling. This saddens me as I see it as a step back from all the genuine progress that has been made in recycling in the past few years. Mixing materials together may seem like the easier option but it dramatically reduces its quality and its resell and environmental value.

In light of this, I was delighted when Camden Council announced a dramatic U-turn on its recycling collections. After an extensive environmental audit last year, it has decided to go with a ‘twin stream’ option rather than the comingled method it uses currently because the audit claimed that the separation of paper and cardboard from other dry recyclables would significantly improve the carbon efficiency of the local authority's collections.

Twin stream recycling collects paper and card in one container and glass, cans and plastics in another. It is a realistic and effective way to collect recycling as it uncomplicated and also maintains the quality of the materials. This is particularly relevant to paper recycling, as shards of glass damage pulping machinery or liquid left in glass and plastic bottles can make it rotten and unusable. It is far better than comingled collections as it satisfies the requirements both of those collecting by preserving the quality of the materials and those recycling as the two containers require very little extra work or thought, even for the laziest recycler.

It’s good to see a council acting intelligently and sticking to their guns when it comes to the environment. They have not taken the easy option by resigning to comingled recycling with the excuse that it is what people want and it is just there to service their needs. Instead they have taken into account that though people are willing to recycle, they also want a hassle-free service and integrated it into a scheme that does not compromise its own environmental ethics. Camden Council has set a very good example by taking this step, I just hope that other councils and businesses will follow its lead and achieve genuine environmental results by supporting real recycling.

Despite last week's snow, the daffodils I’ve seen popping up give me hope that after a dark, cold winter, spring is finally on its way. I'm also pleased to see that there have been some green shoots of hope in the recycling markets.

After the dramatic crashes of last autumn, prices that stabilised in January have made a few tentative increases. According to WRAP, these positive developments suggest the long term market outlook is starting turn. The per tonne prices of white paper, mixed paper and cardboard have all gone up £5-10. Slight these maybe, but in the light of how badly they fell they most certainly offer some kind of hope that recovery is on the horizon.

There are still concerns about volatility in certain markets, China is buying again but its market still remains fragile due to the global economic slowdown, putting cardboard, metal and plastic prices as risk.

The good news is that there has been an increase the demand for paper, which is helping to stabilise prices. Once again, I have all sorts of people calling me wanting to buy my waste paper. This is due to strong demand from UK paper mills and for export to Europe and India.

The increases are not big enough for us relax just yet and I’m under no illusion that they’ll get back to summer 2008 prices in a hurry but they are definitely significant and do offer hope for a good recovery.

Funnily enough, despite all the coverage that recycling had in mainstream press during the crash I’ve seen very little about this in the media, showing how much just how much bad news sells and but loses all interest when situations improve. In this case then, it’s safe to say to say that no news is good news.

Since last week the news has been full of dramatic pictures and stories of how the UK has dealt with the heaviest snow in 18 years. However, as it goes on I’ve become increasingly worried about our complete inability to deal with it all. We’re a nation obsessed with the weather; you’d think that was one area we’d have covered.

Yesterday, a BBC forecaster reported "There will be heavy-lying snow by tomorrow morning - up to 5cm (2in) of snow generally but we could see 10cm in some places and 15cm (6in) on higher ground."

Take a second to look beyond the prospect of being snowed in and actually look at the figures. We’re talking about 2 inches, 6 if you unlucky enough to live on a hill! We are a country in Northern Europe and it’s the middle of winter – why has it caused such chaos? He also goes on to mention that it was the coldest in Inverness-shire since 2003. While -18C is very cold, 2003 was not that long ago, so why are we so unprepared? Many of our European neighbours manage to cope just fine without panic and hysteria.

Though granted it has snowed more than usual, most years we do get some sort of snow but each time we seem to be caught unawares. Initially, it was lots of fun – school and work was called off as people headed out for snowball fights and sledging. However, the charm and amusement has given way to plain embarrassment as airports shut and the country was crippled due to our failure to deal with the snow and ice effectively.

Having an extra long weekend seemed like a blessing to many but millions of people not coming into work is just about the worst thing the economy needs right now. I’m lucky enough to have a workforce of predominantly Eastern European drivers who seemed unfazed by the snow. We had a full fleet out to do our usual 300-odd jobs but over 80 companies were closed. If almost every other country in Northern Europe seems to be able to get by with much more snow, surely it’s not so much the snow that crippled us but our inability to respond effectively. There is something very British about the whole thing but in the current economic climate there is no way we can afford to be so inadequate.

Also, if climate change is causing weather to become more extreme, then we need to hurry up and put in place necessary infrastructure and procedures to deal with unpredictable and volatile conditions or risk going under every time the weather takes a turn for the worse.

The recent cold snap and continued economic downturn brought the festivities to an abrupt halt and made us all wake up to the grim fact that 2009 looks set to be a very tough year. And with household names closing branches, cutting jobs or calling in administrators, just getting through it as a business will be an achievement in itself.

Because of this, most businesses are now reviewing their operations – contracts, suppliers, travel etc - are all being slimmed down to reduce their bottom line. This is a logical solution to the downturn but unfortunately I’ve noticed that increasingly green endeavours, such as recycling and carbon footprint reduction, do not make it through as they are deemed expendable and superfluous.

While there is no denying the severity of the economic downturn, we do need to remember that the threat of climate change does still exist and efforts like recycling and carbon reduction should not be viewed as luxuries only to be indulged in when times are good. When we do emerge from the recession, the problems of climate problems will still be there.

While over-use of carbon offset is most definitely characteristic of the good times - a product that let us pay to carry on as we were guilt-free – we mustn’t lose sight of the actual progress that has been made. Excluding genuine green actions from this year’s budgets will only send us backwards. Instead, these business shake ups should be used as an opportunity to do away with expensive, showy gestures and go back to the basics of Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

Simple actions such as switching to efficient lighting and timers, reviewing business travel and recycling may sound trivial but will improve your bottom line immediately and will do the rare thing of pleasing both your finance and CSR departments.

…And now for some good news: Last month, an Environment Agency report announced that almost a quarter less waste was sent to landfill in 2007 than in 2001. Thanks to the Landfill Tax, the amount of waste sent to landfill has been impressively reduced and the UK looks set to achieve 2010 targets to reduce the pollution potential from landfill, laid out in the EU Landfill Directive.

The report shows that in 2001, the year before the Directive came into effect in England and Wales, around 84 million tonnes of waste was sent to landfill but last year the figure stood at 65 million tonnes – an impressive drop of 23%.

News on recycling and waste so often focuses the negative – we’re not recycling enough, people will get fined for not recycling etc - that most media failed to pick up on the story. However, it is stories like this that need to be publicised with more emphasis because they demonstrate to all those filling up their bins at home and in the office that recycling does make a difference and should encourage them to recycle even more.

The aim of the tax is to encourage recycling by increasing the cost of disposing in landfill. This year’s budget increased the tax by £8 to £32 per tonne and plans to do the same again each coming year. This strengthens the environmental incentive for recycling by adding a financial one, as waste companies pass on this increase to their clients. Businesses in particular are aware of rising waste disposal costs and are now recycling more to avoid them.

Unlike other taxes that try to achieve a Government objective but fail to make any impact, this is a truly progressive policy that is working and really making a difference. Call me a cynic but somehow, I don’t have quite the same confidence for the success of new VAT reform.

You would think that we wouldn’t need more proof that the economy is in a bad state but last week the BBC turned its attention to yet another sector seriously suffering from the downturn: the waste industry. It showed mountains of recycling being stockpiled by a recycling company in Shropshire because its demand and value within the global market had plummeted, leaving the company to face massive profit losses and job cuts, as well as a logistical nightmare.

Unfortunately, this is not an isolated case but one that is affecting recycling companies and councils up and down the country. In all my years in the waste industry, I’ve never seen anything this bad. To give you an idea of volumes, in just one week the UK normally exports around 90,000 tonnes of materials for recycling, so if this trade is disrupted vast amounts of recycling very quickly pile up.

The reason that it’s so bad is because the values of recycled materials that soared to record levels in the summer have now hit rock bottom. Take cardboard for example, it went from £40 /tonne to just £20 a tonne in just two weeks. A week later, it dropped again to zero and now it looks likely that companies will have to pay to dispose of it. The plunge in prices was caused by a sudden fall in demand for recycled materials, especially from China where manufacturers are reducing their output as the US and Europe stop buying products.

So with recovery a long way off, the outlook for the waste sector is not a rosy one. My only slight consolation is that as with other sectors, the recession should sort the wheat from the chaff and materials that are of higher quality, separated and less contaminated than mixed (comingled) recycling will stand a better chance of being sold on. Hopefully, people will now start to see that mixing all recyclables together is not the road to sustainability. We do need to keep recycling but unless we maintain the quality of recyclable materials by keeping them separate, what started out as something that was to help the environment, will in the end cause more harm than good.

Recently, a lowly HM Revenue & Customs mailing clerk’s decision to send some CD’s in the post, resulted in parliamentary questions to the Prime Minister, a police investigation and the resignation of Sir Paul Gray, head of the 70,000 staff organisation. Outrageous though this is, companies and public bodies do not seem to be learning from others’ mistakes and similar cases keep emerging.

One would think that the fear of it happening again would compel every Chief Executive and Managing Director to launch an urgent enquiry into how their organisation is handling and disposing of its confidential data and papers.

Critical though this might seem, I’m not finding it to be the case. I regularly meet facilities managers to discuss their security shredding requirements. One of the first questions I ask is - what is their company’s policy on document retention and disposal, and what paper do they view as confidential and non-confidential? Time and time again I find that companies have no formal policy, leaving managers to struggle to put something sensible in place.

Why don’t people learn? Whether it is DVLA data, UK prisoners’ details or just a small contract, it has never been more important for senior management to specify how it wants this material to be handled. When drawing up guidelines they must think about what information could cause significant harm should it escape into the public domain, or indeed more widely within the organisation (staff salaries, senior management meeting minutes and so on).

Once guidelines have been drawn up and approved by senior management they must be clearly communicated to staff and the necessary infrastructure put in place (normally comprise security bins and a contract to service those bins) to ensure that the system works effectively.

Simple though these steps may be, a worrying number of companies have not put them in place and until they do, we’ll continue to see stories of confidential information made public and cases those responsible desperately to sort out the problem by trying to lock the gate once the horse has bolted.

This year Alistair Darling promised to put sustainability at the centre of this year’s budget. However, I feel that Darling’s green measures were red herrings that distract from the Government’s support of unsustainable issues such as Heathrow’s expansion and new coal-fired power stations.

The budget is a real opportunity for the Government to step up to the plate and lead the way on topics like climate change. With a recession looming, consuming less and being more efficient is even more relevant. Focussing on measures that make very little difference is a waste of time and a distraction from the real debate.

One such measure is possible tax on plastic bags, which he claims could lead to 12 billion fewer bags in circulation. Plastic bags are a problem when it comes to litter, but they should not be used as a significant player in the sustainability debate, particularly when there is little evidence that the ‘bag for life’ alternative has a lower carbon footprint. The average Brit consumes 134 plastic bags a year, resulting in just two kilos of the typical 11 tonnes of carbon dioxide he or she will emit in a year. That is one five thousandth of their overall climate impact.

Of course, it is good that consumers are becoming more aware of their environmental impact throughout their daily lives. However, when it comes to the Government, if it is as serious about climate change as it claims to be, they need to be making bolder steps that make a significant difference, like the large-scale supply of sustainable energy or raising fuel duty.

Half-hearted measures like these allow politicians to pretend to be green but do very little to tackle climate change. Unless they deal with the causes of climate change today, future budgets will have to assign large proportions to its coping with its effects.

Recycling from businesses is being heralded as the next big idea for Local Authorities. Widening the recycling focus from households to encompass the wider municipal waste stream seems like a great idea – but is it?

Like most things it all depends on how it is implemented. If Local Authorities subsidise collections or mix relatively clean business waste with lower grade or co-mingled household recycling, this new policy initiative will actually take us backwards.

Businesses are already recycling large quantities of waste with hundreds of private sector and community based recycling organisations around the country. They pay for this service, like they do for any of their other expenses. Subsidised or marginally costed Local Authority collections will simply result in businesses changing from their existing recycling providers. Recycling will not increase at a national level and the existing private sector recycling industry will be badly damaged by this unfair public sector competition, funded by Council Tax payers.

Collecting business recycling using the same vehicles used for households seems like a great idea. But take paper. Offices will produce predominantly white paper that can easily be turned back into high grade copier paper. Shops will produce lots of clean cardboard. Mix all this with either household paper, which is principally newspapers, or even worse with a co-mingled stream and much of the environmental value of the paper and cardboard will be lost.

In my own experience in the paper recycling industry over the past 15 years I have seen numerous publicly funded recycling schemes come and go. Offering in many cases free collections they have undermined existing private sector firms and upset businesses’ price expectations of what they need to pay to receive a recycling service.

Central and Local Government are best placed to stimulate demand for business recycling, encouraging businesses to recycle as part of their normal life. Government should leave the private sector to meet that demand. It may be with the best intentions, but business waste recycling by local authorities is not a good idea.