CIWM recognises that that this review is on a smaller scale than that planned for 2010. However, the Institution identifies seven priority issues which need urgent Government attention:

• Scope – too much emphasis was given to municipal waste (less than 10% of the total) in 2000. Equal policy attention should be given to non-municipal waste.
• Waste hierarchy - more needs to be done to prevent or re-use waste, before looking to recycling and recovery of materials.
• Simplified and co-ordinated targets – public sector waste targets are too complex and must be reviewed. They don’t encourage waste reduction or affect non-municipal waste.
• Funding - central funding for local authority waste infrastructure and services is too small and too hit and miss. Funding should be on a fair and equitable basis (such as local population), and not through a confusing variety of funds that local authorities are required to bid for.
• Capacity – DEFRA, the Environment Agency and all tiers of local government must be fully resourced and skilled to develop and deliver complex waste strategies. Underestimating the skills and resources needed is holding us all back.
• Communications – the Waste Strategy cannot achieve its goals without a comprehensive, sustained communications strategy and that has to be Government-led.
• Monitoring – England needs a  Strategy Monitoring Group to keep a close watch over how effective policy and strategy are in shifting the country towards more sustainable resource and waste management.

The document goes on to provide a wide-ranging summary of specific actions to help deliver these changes. These include introducing statutory targets for commercial and industrial waste, increasing the Landfill Tax escalator to at least £5 per tonne per year, tax incentives for high recycled content products, mandatory medium term business plans for packaging waste compliance schemes and a variety of measures aimed at supporting and strengthening DEFRA’s lead department status.

The document also discusses three issues too big for the scope of this review, but which need to be debated ‘in the open’ because of their potential importance – local and regional government structure, the definition of waste and restructuring of the planning system.

CIWM chief executive Steve Lee comments: ‘The National Waste Strategy is fundamental to everything this vital industry does. This position statement reflects a need to be realistic in terms of the scope of the 2005 Review balanced against a requirement for significant changes if we are to stand a chance of meeting 2010 Waste Strategy targets.

‘We need continuous strategic monitoring and reviews as opposed to periodic reviews like this one. The pace of change is too great to wait five years for another review to come along.’

For a copy of CIWM's position statement click here

To view presentations - please click here