Draft Strategy
The Greater London Authority Act 1999 requires the London Mayor to produce a Municipal Waste Management Strategy for London (the “Strategy”). “London's Wasted Resource”, is the first draft Strategy. It is to be consulted on in two phases. The first phase of consultation will be with the London Assembly and Functional Bodies. This was launched on 18 January 2010 and will close on 15 March 2010. Following this changes may be made to the Strategy before the second phase of consultation with the public and stakeholders. This second phase is likely in mid-2010 and will last 3 months. The Strategy is to be published in its final form by winter 2010.
The draft Strategy provides early signals of potentially important changes to the management of urban municipal waste. It is conceivable that principles embedded in this Strategy could be adopted in other large urban areas. The consultation should be of interest to not just to those directly involved in the waste management sector. Investors and operators of cleantech waste management should be keenly interested. The draft Strategy relies very heavily on greater use of cleantech (including those interested in the growing nexus between waste and clean energy). Retailers and manufacturers supplying this urban market ought to give due consideration to how the draft Strategy might impact upon waste derived from their products and product packaging. There are interests for the Construction, Infrastructure and Real Estate sectors if only because of the number of sites and facilities that will be required. Full details of the consultation may be found here
The draft Strategy sets out particular objectives
1. To provide Londoners with the knowledge, infrastructure and incentives to change the way municipal waste is managed: to reduce the amount of waste generated, encourage the repair and reuse of items that are currently thrown away, and to recycle or compost as much material as possible.
2. To minimise the impact of municipal waste management on the environment including reducing the carbon footprint of London’s municipal waste.
3. To unlock the economic value of London’s municipal waste through increased levels of reuse, recycling, composting and the generation of clean energy from waste.
4. To manage the bulk of London’s municipal waste within London’s boundary, through investment in new waste infrastructure.
The draft Strategy also lays down targets
1. Zero municipal waste direct to landfill by 2025.
2. Reduce the amount of household waste produced to 790kg by 2031 (in 2008/09 this was 970kg). This is equivalent to a 20 per cent reduction per household.
3. Increase London’s capacity to reuse or repair municipal waste from approximately 10,000 tonnes each year (2008 figures) to 40,000 tonnes per year in 2012 and 120,000 tonnes per year in 2031.
4. Recycle or compost at least 45 per cent of municipal waste by 2015, 50 per cent by 2020 and 60 per cent by 2031.
In addition to these targets, the draft Strategy states that the Mayor will set a greenhouse gas (“GHG”) reduction target for London’s municipal waste (which will follow detailed waste modeling). It is intended that the target will be set out in the second phase of consultation in mid-2010.
Policy areas
In order to achieve the objectives and targets, the draft Strategy focuses on six policy areas:
1. Informing producers and consumers of the value of reducing, reusing and recycling
2. Implementing for London a GHG standard for municipal waste management activities to reduce their impact on climate change
3. Capturing the economic benefits of waste management
4. Achieving 50 per cent municipal waste recycling or composting performance (including anaerobic digestion) by 2020 and 60 per cent by 2031
5. Catalysing municipal waste infrastructure in London, particularly low-carbon technologies
6. Achieving a high level of street cleanliness
The draft Strategy identifies that the rising cost of landfill, growing concerns around energy and climate change, emergence of new commercially available waste technologies, and changing consumer behaviour have all made the “business as usual” approach no longer viable.
Cleantech
The consultation documentation states that the Mayor wants the management of all London’s municipal waste to achieve a positive carbon outcome, particularly for waste that currently goes to landfill or mass-burn incineration. Rather than prescribing particular waste management activities or treatment technologies, the Mayor will set a GHG standard that municipal waste management activities and technologies will need to meet in order to obtain Mayoral support. The aim is that this approach will incentivise movement towards cleaner, efficient energy recovery technologies, including anaerobic digestion, gasification and pyrolysis. Lifecycle GHG modelling will be aligned with financial modelling to ensure solutions are cost-effective, technologically robust and practically achievable in London.
The draft Strategy outlines that the Mayor will work with the Environment Agency, waste authorities, and the waste management sector to develop a consistent and comparable modelling approach to measuring the lifecycle GHG performance for managing London’s municipal waste prior to setting a lifecycle GHG performance standard The Mayor will consult on the modelling approach and GHG performance standard with wider stakeholders during the public consultation phase in mid 2010. In tandem the Mayor will work with London’s existing incineration operators to explore opportunities for using waste heat generated to improve the incinerators’ overall efficiency and GHG performance.
The GLA will use revised emission factors in the development of the next draft of the Strategy for the public consultation phase in mid-2010. The revised figures will also include emissions for all energy recovery methods, including gasification and pyrolysis, generating electricity and using waste heat.
GHG Performance standard
It is intended that a lifecycle GHG performance standard for the management of London’s municipal waste will:
• Reduce and avoid CO2eq emissions from all London’s municipal waste activities to achieve a positive carbon outcome.
• Help boroughs to act in general conformity with the Strategy when developing municipal waste services and contracts.
• Incentivise the takeup and rollout of emerging clean technologies
• Assist waste planning applications to be in general conformity with the London Plan.
The standard will apply to all municipal waste management activities, including from the collection, transport, treatment and the disposal of waste. New municipal waste contracts and waste planning applications will need to meet the standard.
Consideration will also need to be given to waste activities that mitigate negative impacts on human health, including local air quality.
The Mayor expects that in addition to a reduction in GHG emissions, waste will also play an important and active role in reducing emissions from London’s energy, by providing renewable energy. In particular, London’s municipal food, green garden and wood waste can be used to provide decentralised renewable energy, helping the Mayor to achieve the target of a 60 per cent reduction in London’s CO2 emissions (on 1990 levels) by 2025, as set out in The London Plan (consultation draft replacement plan, October 2009).
Conclusion
The draft Strategy has a number of wide implications. Amongst them, the drive to reduce household waste will inevitably put pressure on retailers to reduce packaging or to increase packaging take back whilst the move to more waste management closer to the production of the waste and the movement to above ground management will require more sites and more infrastructure creating new business opportunities.
