As the country goes to the polls today (May 6), councils and businesses are watching closely to see what the national and local elections will mean for the waste and recycling sector.
Latest polls suggest there could be a hung parliament
In what has been widely heralded as the most wide-open election of recent years, all 650 constituencies across the UK are set to vote for one Member of Parliament (MP) each, while council elections are also to be held in many parts of England. Top of the agenda for any new government will be tackling the country’s national debt, with sweeping public spending cuts expected regardless of who comes to power. This in turn is likely to impact upon local authority waste management budgets and central government support for the sector.
While waste and recycling has not been a focal point of the election campaign, the three main parties have addressed the issue in their manifestoes with Labour, the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives all aspiring to a “zero waste nation” and each pledging to set up a bank to fund green infrastructure.
However, there are also differences in their approach to waste – with the Conservatives advocating incentives and voluntary agreements to increase recycling while the Liberal Democrats have thrown their support behind more binding measures such as variable charging and Labour has remained adamant that councils should be left to choose.
Below is a summary of what each party has committed to with regards to waste if they come to power.
Conservative
• Introduce a Responsibility Deal on waste – a voluntary arrangement among producers to cut back on the production of waste and improve its disposal in a bid to move towards a goal of a zero-waste society
• Encourage councils to reward people for recycling.
• Provide funding for councils to provide weekly waste collections.
• Put a floor under the standard rate of landfill tax until 2020, in order to encourage alternative forms of waste disposal.
• Abolish any quangos that do not perform a technical function or a function that requires political impartiality, or act independently to establish facts.
• Abolish the Infrastructure Planning Commission (IPC), instead returning the final decision on large-scale projects including energy-from-waste facilities to a Minister.
• Create a Green Investment Bank to draw together money currently divided across existing government initiatives to finance private sector investment and new green technology start-ups.
• Give local authorities the power to establish district heating networks which use biogas and other low carbon fuels.
Labour
• Drive the introduction of ‘recycling on the go’, with separated public bins on the street and in shopping centres.
• Move towards a ‘zero waste’ Britain by stimulating the sustainable use of resources and banning recyclable and biodegradable materials from landfill.
• Create a ‘Green Investment Bank’ to invest £2 billion in low carbon infrastructure.
• Ensure 40% of Britain’s electricity will come from low-carbon sources, including renewables, by 2020.
• Develop the IPC to speed up decision-making on major projects.
• Create 400,000 new green jobs by 2015.
• Seek to drive down the costs of regulation by more than £6 billion by 2015.
Liberal Democrats
• Give councils the power to introduce variable waste charging – allowing those residents who recycle less to be charged.
• Set targets for ‘zero waste’ including less packaging, more recycling and a huge increase in anaerobic digestion to generate energy from food and farm waste.
• Improve resource efficiency and reduce waste through better produce standards and reducing excess packaging.
• Introduce sustainable design standards to make products last longer and have longer guarantees;
• Cut packaging by forcing retailers and manufacturers to accept products and packaging back from customers once they have come to the end of their useful life – starting with carrier bags and mobile phones.
• Use the government’s purchasing power to expand the market for green, sustainable products and technology.
• Set a target for 40% of UK electricity to come from “clean” sources by 2020, rising to 100% by 2050, and also establishing a “renewables routemap” to 2050.
• Implement a higher feed-in tariff than under current government plans
• Set up a UK Infrastructure Bank to provide capital guarantees and equity to infrastructure projects such as new rail services and green energy.
• Abolish the IPC and return decision-making to the local level, including third party right of appeal where planning decisions go against locally agreed plans.
• A scrappage scheme for buses costing £140 million.
Plaid Cymru and SNP
For a summary of Plaid Cymru’s waste policy, please click here. For the Scottish National Party’s green manifesto policies, which do not cover waste, click here.
