Image inspiration - Salvador Dalí - link
There's a point at which another delayed environmental deadline stops looking like an unfortunate coincidence and starts looking like a pattern. Waste incineration was supposed to enter the UK Emissions Trading Scheme in 2028 - now, it won't. Flexible plastics were supposed to be collected under Simpler Recycling from 2027 - now, they won't be.
Digital Waste Tracking is now almost upon us and very few seem to be asking whether the waste industry is ready. Some undoubtedly are; the major national operators have the money, people and sophisticated software systems to prepare for regulatory change, but Britain’s waste industry isn't just the national operators. It consists of hundreds of smaller waste companies, skip businesses, specialist collectors, transfer stations, recyclers and independent operators. How many of those businesses genuinely understand what Digital Waste Tracking is going to require of them? How many have compatible systems? How many have trained their staff? How many are still assuming that somebody will eventually tell them what to do and what happens if a significant part of the industry simply isn't ready?
Then there's the Deposit Return Scheme. In October 2027 Britain intends to fundamentally change the way billions of drinks containers are collected. We will create return points, reverse vending infrastructure, collection networks, counting centres, sorting systems, financial reconciliation mechanisms and an entirely new flow of material running alongside the waste and recycling infrastructure we already have. Nice idea, but is it ready?
Do we have the infrastructure, the vehicles and the counting capacity,p; or more realistically, can it be purchased, tested and made ready in one year? Do we know what the logistics will actually cost and do the economics work and perhaps most importantly, are we asking these questions early enough or, typical of the UK, will we discover the answers when implementation is already bearing down upon us because we seem to have been here before.
For years Britain has talked enthusiastically about recycling flexible plastics. Then, as the deadline approached, reality intervened. Collecting something is relatively easy. Sorting it economically is harder. Recycling it into something somebody actually wants to buy is harder still so the deadline moved three years.
Now ETS has moved too. Perhaps these are sensible decisions. There's nothing clever about implementing a bad policy on time simply because somebody once typed a date into a consultation document but surely we need to question why we repeatedly get so close to implementation before discovering problems that the people actually working with waste could have described years earlier? Maybe the problem in Britain isn't ambition, it's the distance between the people designing waste policy and the people expected to deliver it - waste policy can look beautifully simple from Whitehall.
Material goes into container - vehicle collects it - facility sorts it - reprocessor recycles it. Carbon emissions fall. Recycling rates rise. A PowerPoint with colourful diagram is produced and everybody goes home. The real world, however, is rather less obedient.
There are drivers, vehicles, depots, permits, contamination, planning applications, more frequent unplanned fires, insurance, commodity markets, volatile recyclate prices, rejected loads, staff shortages, software that doesn't talk to other software and customers who ultimately have to pay for the whole thing.
The strangest example may actually be Digital Waste Tracking.
We are about to build a system designed to give government vastly better information about what waste Britain produces, where it moves and what ultimately happens to it but wouldn't having that information before redesigning enormous parts of Britain's waste system have been rather useful or is that too logical?
We're staggering but simultaneously introducing EPR, Simpler Recycling, Digital Waste Tracking and Deposit Return while attempting to decarbonise waste treatment and reshape the economics of packaging which is an extraordinary amount of structural change even for a government that actually understands the industry intimately. Does this one 🤔?
I assume that someone has asked what happens when EPR interacts with DRS; DRS alters the material entering kerbside recycling; Simpler Recycling changes collection patterns; DWT records those movements and eventually ETS changes the economics of whatever remains? Who is stress testing the combined system and who's actually responsible for making sure all these separate policies work together, and who, ultimately, carries the risk if the assumptions are wrong? That'll be us then, the waste management industry!
Britain needs better recycling. We need better data. We need producers to take greater responsibility for what they place onto the market. We need to reduce fossil carbon in residual waste, but environmental ambition without practical deliverability isn't environmental policy - Ipit's a timetable and Britain's waste policy timetable is beginning to acquire rather a lot of crossings out. More like this (legislation) - link - more like this (questioning policy) - link - more like this (waste tracking) - link
Digital Waste Tracking is now almost upon us and very few seem to be asking whether the waste industry is ready. Some undoubtedly are; the major national operators have the money, people and sophisticated software systems to prepare for regulatory change, but Britain’s waste industry isn't just the national operators. It consists of hundreds of smaller waste companies, skip businesses, specialist collectors, transfer stations, recyclers and independent operators. How many of those businesses genuinely understand what Digital Waste Tracking is going to require of them? How many have compatible systems? How many have trained their staff? How many are still assuming that somebody will eventually tell them what to do and what happens if a significant part of the industry simply isn't ready?
Then there's the Deposit Return Scheme. In October 2027 Britain intends to fundamentally change the way billions of drinks containers are collected. We will create return points, reverse vending infrastructure, collection networks, counting centres, sorting systems, financial reconciliation mechanisms and an entirely new flow of material running alongside the waste and recycling infrastructure we already have. Nice idea, but is it ready?
Do we have the infrastructure, the vehicles and the counting capacity,p; or more realistically, can it be purchased, tested and made ready in one year? Do we know what the logistics will actually cost and do the economics work and perhaps most importantly, are we asking these questions early enough or, typical of the UK, will we discover the answers when implementation is already bearing down upon us because we seem to have been here before.
For years Britain has talked enthusiastically about recycling flexible plastics. Then, as the deadline approached, reality intervened. Collecting something is relatively easy. Sorting it economically is harder. Recycling it into something somebody actually wants to buy is harder still so the deadline moved three years.
Now ETS has moved too. Perhaps these are sensible decisions. There's nothing clever about implementing a bad policy on time simply because somebody once typed a date into a consultation document but surely we need to question why we repeatedly get so close to implementation before discovering problems that the people actually working with waste could have described years earlier? Maybe the problem in Britain isn't ambition, it's the distance between the people designing waste policy and the people expected to deliver it - waste policy can look beautifully simple from Whitehall.
Material goes into container - vehicle collects it - facility sorts it - reprocessor recycles it. Carbon emissions fall. Recycling rates rise. A PowerPoint with colourful diagram is produced and everybody goes home. The real world, however, is rather less obedient.
There are drivers, vehicles, depots, permits, contamination, planning applications, more frequent unplanned fires, insurance, commodity markets, volatile recyclate prices, rejected loads, staff shortages, software that doesn't talk to other software and customers who ultimately have to pay for the whole thing.
The strangest example may actually be Digital Waste Tracking.
We are about to build a system designed to give government vastly better information about what waste Britain produces, where it moves and what ultimately happens to it but wouldn't having that information before redesigning enormous parts of Britain's waste system have been rather useful or is that too logical?
We're staggering but simultaneously introducing EPR, Simpler Recycling, Digital Waste Tracking and Deposit Return while attempting to decarbonise waste treatment and reshape the economics of packaging which is an extraordinary amount of structural change even for a government that actually understands the industry intimately. Does this one 🤔?
I assume that someone has asked what happens when EPR interacts with DRS; DRS alters the material entering kerbside recycling; Simpler Recycling changes collection patterns; DWT records those movements and eventually ETS changes the economics of whatever remains? Who is stress testing the combined system and who's actually responsible for making sure all these separate policies work together, and who, ultimately, carries the risk if the assumptions are wrong? That'll be us then, the waste management industry!
Britain needs better recycling. We need better data. We need producers to take greater responsibility for what they place onto the market. We need to reduce fossil carbon in residual waste, but environmental ambition without practical deliverability isn't environmental policy - Ipit's a timetable and Britain's waste policy timetable is beginning to acquire rather a lot of crossings out. More like this (legislation) - link - more like this (questioning policy) - link - more like this (waste tracking) - link
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