Agenda item

Report of the Managing Director, North London Waste Authority

The draft North London Joint Waste Strategy (the Strategy) is a statutory requirement and is a joint strategy between Barnet Council, Camden Council, Enfield Council, Hackney Council, Haringey Council, Islington Council, the North London Waste Authority (NLWA) and Waltham Forest Council. The Strategy will guide our work for the next fifteen years and through the aims and activities as set out in the document, will help north London move towards a low waste, sustainable future.

NLWA is facilitating a public consultation on the Strategy, seeking views from residents, business and local communities to ensure a fully rounded and robust final Strategy is developed which draws on a wide range of views and expertise. The consultation will be over a 12-week period and will close on 19 January 2025. Adoption of the Strategy is expected in 2025.

Consideration was given to the report of the Managing Director of the North London Waste Authority.

Martin Capstick, Managing Director, Eleanor Hayward, Senior Strategy and Policy Manager and Isaac Rosen, Senior Strategy and Policy Manager made the following comments in response to Committee members questions:

·       The North London Waste Authority (NLWA) were part of an overall joint delivery strategy for North London. Camden collected the waste and relied on NLWA to dispose of the waste by using their facilities.

·       NLWA relied on understanding what residents in Camden were generating in their household waste so that the Waste Authority could plan and deliver accordingly.

·       In relation to how people were kept informed of NLWA activities and key updates, the Waste Authority aimed to be as open and transparent as possible by producing an annual report and publishing this on the website. Some Councils had requested regular attendance at scrutiny meetings.

·       NLWA officers were happy to be guided by its members as to how they should be best kept informed of its activities and strategies.

·       The NLWA also produced regular two-to-three-year action plans setting out what it could do to improve the environmental performance of the waste sector. This set a sense of direction and some thought could be put in to how members could be engaged with those action plans.

·       In terms of the climate emergency, in consulting with residents there was a strong recognition amongst them that waste was a contributor to the climate emergency both in consumption and disposal of waste so action to reduce and manage waste in the right way could deliver a strong climate benefit.

·       Members were also clear that tackling the climate emergency was a key priority of the waste strategy both in the collection and disposal of waste.

·       There was a limitation to what the Waste Authority could do to control the waste received and was a reason why it wanted to work in partnership with the government and manufacturers.

·       The more things were reused and recycled, the more waste was reduced, the better the environmental outcome.

·       In terms of lobbying, NLWA was the second largest waste disposal authority in the country. It was close to Westminster and regularly dealt with government officers and had a powerful voice.

·       The most promising area for environmental improvement was increasing the polluter pays principle which referred to manufacturers paying into a fund in accordance with the amount of packaging they produced. This drove behaviour change as it served as an incentive to improve packaging making it more recyclable. 

·       In terms of disposal of harmful/difficult materials, NLWA was generally guided by Environment Agency rules and research rather than a particular north London approach.

·       In terms of plastics, there had been steps taken by the government to reduce plastics and were strong supporters of the deposit return scheme which encouraged people to recycle and put plastics in the right place so that it could have a new life after its initial use.

·       In terms of the North London Heat and Power Project, work was underway and not being paused. There had been a delay due to the contractor not subcontracting the work on time which caused construction delays. However, there was no change to the capacity of the facility and the waste volumes forecast.

·       In terms of the recycling rate, in general terms authorities that declared a recycling rate of around 50%, 25% of that would be garden waste., 50% residual waste and 25% general recycling in north London. In urban areas garden waste was around 5% of the total which was why there would always be a lower recycling rate in urban areas such as London compared to Oxfordshire or Norfolk.

The Committee thanked NLWA officers for attending the meeting and responding to questions, and

RESOLVED:

To note the draft North London Joint Waste Strategy in Appendix 1 and the Consultation Survey in Appendix 2.