Defra has revealed that it has little idea about future arisings in the commercial and industrial waste sector partly because large waste management companies are reluctant to share their data.
The admission came from Defras top waste official, Dr Colin Church, during an inquiry into government policies on biowaste, held by the House of Lords select committee yesterday (December 17). Dr Church also told the Lords that it was not government policy to dictate waste collection methods.
At the meeting chaired by Lord Krebs, Dr Collin Church, director of resource, atmosphere, and sustainability at the department, conceded that the data for C&I waste was partially flawed in comparison to household waste.
When asked whether waste data was being collected on a reliable basis, Dr Church said: For commercial and industrial waste, the data is much, much less good. There are two or three data points for surveys that have been done for businesses in the last 10 years. These are incredibly expensive surveys to run but even then you only touch five or six thousand businesses and they dont tend to be compositional analyses.
We believe the large waste management companies probably have far greater data than we do and we have been trying to get them to share it with us. The problem is for many of them that data contains intellectual property and commercial sensitivity, so we cant use it in anyway as it tends to expose the things they dont want to expose.
He added that the uncertainty makes it difficult to know what will happen to C&I waste arisings in the future: We do not know if growth will go up, down, or stay the same.
Priorities
Dr Church was giving evidence alongside Janice Monday, director of advanced manufacturing and services at the Department for Business, and Olivia Knibbs, head of independent renewable generation at DECC.
He was also grilled on the governments attitude towards anaerobic digestion (AD), separate recycling collections and local authority investment.
We believe the large waste management companies probably have far greater data than we do and we have been trying to get them to share it with us.
Dr Colin Church, Defra
During the call for evidence, the three department representatives were also repeatedly asked whether government had an overall strategy for a viable bio-economy by Lord Peston, who accused Defra, DECC, and BIS of having different priorities.
Treatment of food waste also caused heated debate, with Lord Peston criticising the departments for their laissez-faire approach to waste management and calling for a driving force in government that would either be for or against separate recycling collections.
Responding to the accusation, Dr Church said: You seem to be assuming that this is something government should dictate. I fundamentally disagree with your assertion that there is one correct way of collecting waste.
I live in a very nice place with lots of space to store my waste if I wanted to. Down the street are flats that have little or no storage space. How you store, collect, separate or deal with waste is not the same if you want to get good separation.
Regulation
The second committee session focused on the burden of regulation within the waste industry, specifically the relationship between the Environment Agency, economic stimulation, and new technologies.
Focusing on the AD sector as an example of where regulation can help economic and technological growth, Ed Mitchell, executive director of environment and business at the Environment Agency, said: Weve just published a protocol that clarifies if you clean up the gas produced by anaerobic digestion it is no longer waste and so those waste controls cease to bite.
Its an elaborate process forming these policy protocols as they have to be accepted under the EU Directives, but I am hopeful this will open up significant opportunities for businesses looking to invest in the technology.
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