On the 14th July 2005, the Council considered and agreed our Waste Strategy, Towards Zero Waste 2020, including a 5 year Action Plan 2005-2010.
These papers are now available online here.
In August of 2005 the Planning Transportation & Economy Overview & Scrutiny panel reviewed waste & recycling services and made recommendations to the Executive Member. View this report here.
We are still amongst the top recycling authorities within the country, recycling almost 43% of our household waste in 2009/10 – but we still landfill all of our waste that is not recycled – 45,149 tonnes of household waste in 2009/10. For more detailed information regarding the waste statistics for Bath and North East Somerset from 2004/05 to 2009/10 refer to the statistics page.
We send our residual waste by road to landfill sites in South Gloucestershire and Somerset. We do not dispose of any waste within our own district. This is not sustainable. One step towards improving this situation is our work on the West of England Phase 2 Contract.
Landfill space is running out and disposing of waste is becoming ever more expensive. New laws mean that we will face significant financial penalties if we continue to landfill so much. If we don’t divert more of our waste from landfill then we could be fined significant sums of money over the next 10 years. Also landfill tax is continuing to rise year on year for the waste we do have to send for disposal, the tax bill alone for 2009/10 was £1.8 million.
We must recycle more and find new ways of treating our waste in order to reduce the amount we landfill. We must develop local solutions for treating waste so that we maximise the value of resources that can be produced from it, and reduce our reliance on long distance haulage in developing cost effective solutions. We need also to further develop the minimisation of waste generated together with supporting the re-use of items to further divert materials and products from ending up as landfill.
The strategy outlines the steps we need to take now and over the next few years to reduce the amount of waste that we produce, to recycle as much as possible and to develop new ways of treating the remaining waste to maximise its value and divert it from landfill.
We are in the process of reviewing the waste strategy to bring it up to date with recent and forthcoming legislation. This will also include a section on key corporate and waste policies, together with a summary of key actions and projects for 2011/12. We are carrying out some public consultation from December 2010 to March 2011. Please follow this link to the online consultation system to read the documents and answer the questions.