AQW 16161/17-22

Mr John Blair
Alliance Party
South Antrim

Tabled Date: 10/03/2021
Answered On Date: 19/03/2021
Priority Written: No

Question:
To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (i) whether his Department has carried out any assessment of the issue highlighted in the recent Channel 4 Dispatches documentary on household waste collected for recycling being sent to incinerators and burned; and (ii) what action is being taken to remedy this problem.

Answer:

The introduction of the Waste (Circular Economy) (Amendment) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2020, a transposition of the Circular Economy Package (CEP) into domestic legislation, has set the tone for what the future of recycling will look like in Northern Ireland and is supported by the proposals laid out in the recent consultation Future Recycling and Separate Collection of Waste of a Household Nature in Northern Ireland. The CEP is key to pushing resources further up the waste hierarchy, away from landfill and incineration. It also states that waste separately collected for re-use or recycling may not be incinerated or landfilled.

The latest statistics indicate that 22% of all municipal waste arisings in Northern Ireland are incinerated and that of the 95,536 tonnes of recycling collected at the kerbside, around 11% of this is rejected and sent for energy recovery, (based on 2019-20 annual report, prior to the introduction of the CEP) This number is significantly lower than other parts of the UK, and my Department is working closely with councils and delivery partners to improve this further. In addition, councils are well aware of the benefits of reusing and recycling our resources over and above incineration or landfill.

I am continually striving to ensure that more action is taken to address consistency in collections and contamination within recycling streams. In order to improve the quality and quantity of our recycling and thereby enabling a transition to a low carbon, circular economy, I believe it is important that difficult or non-recyclable items are removed from recycling streams before they are collected. My department is addressing this through;

Working to make packaging better: making it clear to recyclers which items can be accepted in recycling streams and which cannot. My Department are working with their counterparts across the UK and delivery partners, such as WRAP to address this problem and identify how to provide better consistency. Upcoming legislative drivers such as Extended Producer Responsibility and the Environment Bill will allow even further development in this area.

A better consistency of items collected: this approach helps ensure that items collected are readily accepted by recycling processers and importantly, that there are end markets available for them. My officials are working on developing policy for the future of recycling and are considering how we can achieve better consistency in Northern Ireland.

A better understanding of what can be recycled: my Department actively promotes moving resources up the waste hierarchy, encouraging prevention, reuse and recycling above incineration and landfill as a last resort. Behaviour change campaigns in association with WRAP appeal to householders to help them understand how to recycle and what the benefits are. In addition to this my Department works very closely with the National Communications Action Plan, which convenes local councils to encourage consistency in recycling and resource communications as well as identifying and addressing any areas that need greater focus.