Recent revelations about the environmental cost of burning household rubbish have brought the uncomfortable issue of what happens to our bins after they’re carted off into the spotlight.

Usually, municipal waste falls firmly into the category of things we would prefer not to think about, along with the fate of our waste water once it is flushed and the invisible emissions from our daily activities. Turning a blind eye though won’t make the problem disappear and the municipal waste industry faces challenges that demand our urgent attention.

The polluting effect of incineration is being exacerbated by factors such as low engagement with recycling schemes, and hesitancy by waste management companies to invest due to challenging market conditions. The clock is ticking too, with demand for waste services expected to rapidly increase to serve the 1.5 million new homes the Government has pledged to deliver.

We owe it to all those in the waste management sector who bear the brunt of these issues to challenge unwillingness to engage with waste and facilitate productive conversations across government, industry, and our communities.

The incineration debate

Incineration to produce energy from waste (EfW) is a complex issue. It is true that EfW makes a sizeable contribution to greenhouse gas emissions. But this is only part of the picture.

EfW is critical to handling residual household waste that would otherwise go to landfill and contribute to methane release that also increases emissions and is a more powerful greenhouse gas than the emissions produced from incineration. As a result, many argue that EfW is the best available solution to deal with non-recyclable waste.

Whatever the way forward, there are clearly disagreements that need to be addressed. This will entail engaging policymakers, industry leaders and environmental groups in productive discussions about how to balance our growing waste disposal needs with environmental responsibility.

Essential public engagement

Another way to reduce dependency on incineration is upstream reduction of non-recyclable waste by improving recycling rates.

A recent study commissioned by the Local Government Association (LGA), County Councils Network (CCN) and District Councils Network (DCN) found that last year, 2.3 million tonnes of packaging was put into residual or ‘black’ bins, and 70,000 tonnes were erroneously put in with food waste. This exposes a worrying gap in public understanding about proper recycling and highlights the need for clearer education about sorting waste.

There are important lessons to be learned here from previous efforts such as Recycle Now’s 2004 Recycle Week campaign that helped successfully usher in recycling bins. This campaign and other initiatives have shown that the public is willing to support environmental improvement. The task now is to harness this willingness once again through engagement and education that inspires meaningful behavioural change.

Better business communication

Residual household waste only accounts for a portion of EfW feedstock, however. The most recent Government figures show that UK businesses contribute a staggering proportion of UK waste per year but despite this only around half of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) employ commercial recycling services.

The Government’s Simpler Recycling Reform, which comes into effect from 31 March 2025, will seek to address this by requiring non-household municipal premises to arrange collection of dry recyclable waste streams. While this is a positive step, policy interventions such as this must be properly communicated, and evidence indicates that UK businesses currently lack the awareness needed to recycle responsibly.

This suggests the need for stronger business networks to improve commercial waste management. By building stronger business networks and facilitating communication between the waste management sector and wider industry, we can improve commercial recycling rates and develop a more resilient market for waste management.

Tackling challenges together

The challenges we face in improving waste management, and in particular decarbonising this crucial sector, are numerous but not insurmountable.

We can tackle them head on but to do this, we need to make municipal waste a bigger part of the national conversation and bring diverse stakeholders from policymakers to the general public together in positive and productive conversations about waste.

If we are going to improve services while reducing emissions and prevent the situation turning into a crisis akin to that faced by the water sector, then we need to rethink how we’re engaging people with new waste management solutions.

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