Parliament’s green watchdog, the Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) will convene today (28 June) to hear evidence for the first time for its inquiry into HM Treasury’s contribution to promoting sustainability and integrating it into government decision-making.

One particular part of the inquiry will look at how the Treasury policy helps government meet national and local waste and recycling targets.

The inquiry follows on from investigations into other departments (the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills, the Home Office and the National Health Service) and sustainability.

In a call for evidence last month, the EAC, which consists of a panel of 15 Members of Parliament from four parties, asked for written statements outlining whether stakeholders thought the Treasury played a positive role in meeting waste targets, and whether policies implemented by the Treasury and the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) were coherent.

Stakeholders were also asked what impact Treasury policy had on the ability to finance recycling and waste projects during the last Parliament and what impact it is likely to have on future targets.

Today’s session will see figures from environmental charity the WWF, manufacturers’ organisation the EEF and academics from the London School of Economics give evidence. Another session is organised for next week (5 July), though witnesses at the inquiry have yet to be confirmed.

The committee has already published two written statements received from waste management company Veolia and the Joint Waste Disposal Authorities (JWDA – the authorities of Greater Manchester, Merseyside and four covering London).

English Waste Strategy needed

The JWDA, which deals with around 16.1 per cent of England’s local authority-collected waste, used its statement to call for an English Waste Strategy to outline a shared vision across all English stakeholders and provide a long-term framework and financial incentives to inform investment and market opportunities.

Fundamental action is needed, the JWDA says, on a national level to make sure that England meets its European obligations of 50 per cent recycling by 2020 and capitalises on opportunities for economic growth, market opportunities and jobs. It states that ‘getting the right financial framework, with appropriate fiscal incentives is imperative to achieving… targets’.

Investment in waste collections, in particular those for food waste, is one of the ways that government could help achieve recycling targets, it says. Using data from Trafford in Greater Manchester, the JWDA shows how first adding food waste to its garden waste collection in 2011/12 and then optimising the collection with free kitchen caddies and liners in 2013/14, both dramatically increased biowaste tonnages, while also cutting residual waste generation by almost 1,000 tonnes a month.

The statement reads: ‘Clearly, adequate investment in biowaste collection is crucial to meeting national targets, yet a number of local authorities have withdrawn these services because they are too costly.’

A fiscal- and market-driven approach that taxes raw materials and provides tax relief to recycled content could also bring greater demand for recycled materials, the plan suggests: ‘Recycling companies are often in a vulnerable position, unable to secure long term revenue certainty and susceptible to changes in the spot prices for materials. We believe that could be addressed by developing a new model that allowed public sector support to cushion the base market, with costs recovered when markets are at a peak. We believe that such a mechanism if correctly constructed would avoid any issues of “state aid” but enable investment to be funded by the private sector, creating jobs and prosperity.’

The proposed plan also calls for initiatives outside of the EAC inquiry’s scope, including laws making participation in recycling compulsory and harmonised collection systems.

Moving the goalposts hard on industry infrastructure

Veolia, meanwhile, addressed each of the questions posed by the call for evidence in turn, stating that HM Treasury policy has played a positive role towards meeting landfill diversion targets through the introduction of the landfill tax.

However, on the question of whether its policies lined up with those of Defra, the company attacked the omission of waste management in the 25-year environmental plan published by Defra this year, saying that there is no clear Defra strategy.

And while it notes that the PFI (private finance initiative)/PPP (public private partnerships) programme had led to the construction of a number of large-scale waste facilities, the Treasury ‘moving the goalposts’ in terms of changes to energy subsidies had created uncertainty and a difficult investment climate for infrastructure.

The company wrote: ‘It is important to note that energy subsidies can cross-finance some waste projects, such as energy from waste, and so changes to Renewables Obligation Certificates, Feed-in-Tariffs and the removal of Levy Exemption Certificates for example can all impact on the financial viability of some waste projects.’

It also mentioned food waste collections and the negative impact of austerity on the provision of waste services across the country, making the 50 per cent recycling target for 2020 ‘ever more difficult’.

While landfill tax was praised for increasing diversion, Veolia emphasised that the Treasury should be ‘conscious of the sunset of landfills’ and that there should be a ‘clear long-term direction of travel for landfill tax, beyond the next couple of years, to allow for adequate future planning and to make the necessary arrangements for closure and aftercare’.