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ESTABLISHING THE BASELINE

Waste arisings

It is difficult to collate comprehensive data in the waste management sector since data collection is patchy and there are so many different entities performing a range of management activities. Various types of kerbside collections, civic amenity sites and bring/drop-off sites are administered and run by Waste Disposal Authorities, Waste Collection Authorities, private companies, community groups etc., sometimes in conjunction with normal refuse collection. In other words, there is no standardised way of managing waste and recycling therefore no standardised way of collecting data. This is not to say that waste management should be standardised, rather that data collection does need to be, especially if the Landfill Directive and the Government's subsequent waste strategy is to be implemented and the targets met. This is also the case for other waste stream policies such as the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) and End-of-Life Vehicles (ELV) Directives.

National data on waste arisings is collected annually through two surveys. The Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA) has a survey of waste collection and disposal statistics. This survey has been carried out since the mid-1970s, following the reorganisation of local government. According to CIPFA, data collected was reasonably comprehensive until the late 1980s when Compulsory Competitive Tendering (CCT) was introduced. Local Authorities expressed concern about the sensitivity of the information they were required to submit, feeling that the financial data was confidential. Thus, valuable national waste statistics were negatively affected by financial data constraints. More recently, responses to CIPFA have crept up again, following a redrafting of the survey which now places emphasis on the scope and level of service provision, and levels of recovery and recycling of waste materials in particular. However, the survey still collects financial waste data.

Following the introduction of the landfill tax in 1996, waste arisings data has become more exact since waste is now weighed to establish how much tax is to be paid, and materials going for recycling are weighed in order to get Local Authority recycling credits. There is still some "leakage" where materials go to re-use, re-sale or re-manufacture initiatives, for example to charity shops or companies stripping components for re-use from end-of-life products like photocopiers. Further leakage occurs when waste is diverted to home composters or other such "unmanaged" sites. These elements are not weighed so data cannot be (or simply is not) captured systematically. The latest CIPFA report² gives a total household waste arising figure for 1997/8 of 21,802,260. This figure is based upon an 80% response rate from Local Authorities, so a roughly grossed up to 100% figure would be just over 26 million tonnes. This is in line with the household waste arising in 1996/7 figure from DETR's Digest of Environmental Statistics³, the latest figures available from this source.

The second annual survey on waste statistics is commissioned by the Government. This is also an annual survey of Local Authorities in England and Wales, on collection, treatment and disposal of household and other waste collected by the Local Authorities. Data here is presented on a regional basis, and does not include financial data - which the Government thought would help increase response rates from the local authorities. Municipal Waste Management 1995/6 is the latest published data from this survey. According to the Government⁴, this showed that 1997/8 waste arisings in England and Wales was 27 million tonnes per year, 24.6 million of which were from household sources. On a per household basis, this works out to 22kg per week, implying a total household figure for England and Wales of 21 million, which is in line with Government statistics. Limiting Landfill, the Government's recent consultation document on the Landfill Directive, details an even higher figure of 29 million tonnes per year⁵. This higher figure, according to the Government, corresponds with the figure submitted by the Government to the OECD and EUROSTAT on the amount of municipal waste arising nationally in 1995. Based upon the estimate of 21 million households, this brings the weekly household waste arising figure to 26.5 kgs or 1,380 kgs per year.

However, both the 22kg and 26.5kg weekly rates are almost double the figure estimated through independent research⁶, showing that household waste arisings were nearer 15 million tonnes - or a household annual yield of around 620-650 kgs.

This marked discrepancy is worth exploring, since "municipal" and "household" wastes in the UK are not similar and the different terms appear to be used to mean similar types of waste. The Government's definition of municipal waste is different to the rest of the European Union, in that it considers municipal waste that which is collected by, or on behalf of, a local authority. This can include commercial waste. In the Landfill Directive, municipal waste is that from households and waste from commerce, institutions and other organisations which, because of its composition, is similar to household waste. So, the Government distinguishes waste according to collection whereas the EU's distinction is according to composition.

The 15 million tonnes of household waste arisings appears in the table below, the total of which appears to represent the 29 million tonne estimate that appears in Limiting Landfill.

Table 2: UK Municipal Waste Arisings

 * Commercial and industrial waste collected by, or on behalf of, local authorities.

Recognising the various discrepancies, this report will use the more realistic and reflective figure of 22 million tonnes of municipal waste arisings for England and Wales, with an annual increase of 3%. Since the increase in waste arisings is highest in this sector, and the Landfill Directive focuses on biodegradable municipal waste, this report will focus on the job creation potential from household recycling schemes at the kerbside, as well as at bring/drop-off and civic amenity sites.

The report focuses on those materials that make up a typical kerbside collection scheme:

• paper and card;
• glass;
• steel;
• aluminium;
• plastic

Employment in recycling according to the statistics

It is difficult to identify a figure for employment in the recycling sector. Waste management data collection is not refined enough to classify employment information according to waste treatment types. Also, the cost of collecting information at this level of detail may be disproportionate to the benefits of the data. However, if the employment implications of waste management decisions are to be considered amid the other influencing factors in a decision-making process, a certain level of knowledge or understanding of current employment would be beneficial.

One source of annual employment data is the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI). The DTI requires companies to report on numbers of employees according to a Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) code. The table below indicates the number of people working in the "traditional" recycling-related SICs in 1997:

Table 3: Total employee jobs by SIC codes in Great Britain, 1997

The SIC code system is not refined enough to capture jobs in companies whose primary activity is not recycling, but who undertake these sorts of activities - such as private waste management companies - as well as completely missing out the community sector. However, this total is still within the range of an estimate of recycling employment made by the DTI in 1993. A memorandum from the Department stated that between 10-20 percent of the jobs in waste management were attributed to recycling. At that time, there were 87,000 jobs in waste management, so the recycling employment figure ranged from 8,700 to 17,400.

Recent research undertaken for WAMITAB has identified a total of 65,000 jobs in the waste management sector, and that the sub-sectors where jobs are increasing are in the recycling of waste products⁷. Unfortunately, specific figures were not available.

Community sector organisations undertake some recycling activities, mostly on behalf of local authorities. Many of these are members of the Community Recycling Network (CRN). According to 1999 data from CRN, it has over 250 member organisations. The majority of these run weekly kerbside collection schemes, which cover 4.1 million households - almost 20% of the total number of households. The 1999 figure for employment is 1,000 full-time and 660 part-time staff. This latter figure could not be translated into full-time equivalents. However it is worth noting that the full-time figures have doubled in the last two years, and that in the same time 110 positions were created and filled by people who were working with the schemes on a voluntary basis.

In order to identify where an increase in recycling rates will bring job growth or creation, it is worth attempting to separate employment figures into collection, sorting and reprocessing according to current waste arisings. For the sake of simplicity, reprocessing here means the preparation of the recyclate for its use in the manufacturing of another product. Also, the definition of recycling used in this report is only part of that found in the European Commission document "The Competitiveness of the Recycling Industries", published in 1998. The document states that: "Recycling is defined in the Directive on packaging and packaging waste as the reprocessing in a production process of the waste materials for the original purpose or for other purposes, including organic recycling but excluding energy recovery. For the purpose of the communication recycling industries also include enterprises which have activities such as collection, dismantling and sorting as far as they are followed by recycling in the sense of the Directive cited above". This report does not address organic recycling or the materials that fall outside the typical household recycling scheme, including products that can be dismantled or refurbished and recycled or reused.

[² Waste Collection and Disposal Statistics 1997-98 Actuals,Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy, April 1999

³ Digest of Environmental Statistics No. 20 1998, Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions; www.environment.detr.gov.uk/des20/chapter7/2.htm

⁴ A way with waste - A draft waste strategy for England and Wales, Part Two; Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions, June 1999; pg 13

⁵ Limiting Landfill - A consultation paper on limiting landfill to meet the EC Landfill Directive's targets for the landfill of biodegradable municipal waste, Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions in partnership with the National Assembly for Wales, October 1999; pg 13

⁶ Parfitt J., Flowerdew, R and Pocock, R.L.; A Review of UK Household Waste Arisings and Compositional Data; R&D Technical Report, Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions Wastes Technical Division, 1999, pg 240.

⁷ Developing the Sector View; WAMITAB Occupational analysis survey of the Waste Sector 1999]

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