• Lack of money
  - cost of collection, disposal and recycling
  - up front cost of local infrastructure
• Knowledge
  - Background
  - For decision making
• Recycling rate/annual waste arisings
• Annual waste increase
• Lack of incentives to reduce
• Complexity of the issues
• Lacking in local government
  - Skills
  - Officer time
  - Infrastructure
• Technical processes involved, but treated as waste rather than manufacturing
• Waste is not treated as a resource
  - Public perception issue
  - Culture issue
  - Word "waste" is a problem
• WDA/WCA conflict – structure of local government
  - 2 tier system is a problem – need to work together on sources of supply and markets
• Awareness of waste – need to analyse
• Markets. Are the markets there?
  - Lack of reprocessing plants
  - Monopolies in certain materials
  - Pricing fluctuations a problem
  - Reprocessors make the rules
  - Affected by supply and demand
• The risk needs to be shared - partnerships between LA/industry
• Costs of collection and disposal going up – recycling contributes to budget but council tax going up so public can’t see financial benefit.
• Need investment to change the financial equation
• Financial constraints – can’t charge for household waste by weight.
• Global economy – imports of eg paper from Germany mean less demand/lower price for local materials
• Achievement not vision is the problem
• The waste industry is focussed on landfill

What LAs can do to close the loop at local level over the next 10 years

• Lack of money
  - Bid for more
  - Landfill tax
  - Recycling credits
  - Prioritise LA budgets
• Increase markets
  - LA role in assisting development, as facilitators – planning departments
  - Collecting material required by markets – the right material
  - Sorting to isolate right material
  - Provide security of supply – quantity and composition. Market fluctuations a problem but most contracts have force majeur clause
  - Constantly monitor composition of waste stream/materials supplied
  - Dialogue with local chambers of commerce
  - Coordinate sharing of information countrywide
  - Help from WRAP/SEEDA
• Economic development
  - First explore existing links with businesses
  - Should be a strong government strategy with policy statements, and also with flexibility to take into account local conditions
  - Public/private partnership
  - Incentive – provide cheap recycled material
  - Expand new usage locally
  - Investment
  - Use greater proportion of landfill tax for local environmental projects

• Suggestion for Hampshire
  - PI /plastic processor partnership to set up plant in Hants
  - How big an area to supply it? More than one county?
  - Location near MRF
  - Over capacity in processing
  - Costly to set up in the south
  - Needs to be an incentive
  - Could do part of the process locally – plastic chips
• Look at materials being used by local businesses – research
• Counties to join forces in regional partnership – economies of scale for processing plant locally

- Local authorities partnership; several counties
- Environmental considerations
- Can satisfy environmental targets/regulations from commercial waste stream
- Sufficient tonnage needs to be collected
- Need to determine what to take from domestic waste stream – eg bottles only
- Interest from reprocessor to make chips only to sell to other markets

• Strategy to include ERI
  - Public perception – plastics (from oil) ® energy (oil is a fuel); appropriate process
  - Needs careful handling
  - Local
  - Must not affect recycling
  - Politics – small and local for planning consent
• Proximity to existing MRFs/processing companies
  - Weigh benefits of local processing (+ cost) against transporting (may be cheaper)
  - SEEDA role to help development in the SE
  - Far East is competitive alternative
  - Global economy
  - Regional solution – possibly 3-4 plants in country
• Enlist Universities/Higher Education to find new products - need to introduce high selling product.
• Large scale operations for funding – focus to get going
• Different types of plastic eg PEN
• Supermarket process to reduce volume of plastic. Take back scheme
• Technically possible to combine plastics to produce new product, but can’t successfully sell end product.
  - Cost
  - End product then recyclable?

• Collection/processing/markets need to be considered as a whole.
  - More money directed to collection

• Regional basis - counties to join forces for economies of scale.
• Collect only types of plastic required (bottles)
• produce sufficient tonnage to attract reprocessor to make plastic chips only
• Produce a product for the global market.

2. Regeneration (Energy Recovery)

• Strategy should include ERI and public perception be changed
• Oil (fuel) used to produce plastics, eventually plastic waste used as fuel to produce energy.
• Must not affect recycling.
• Keep small and local for planning consent.

3. Collect, separate and send to the best economic market

• Global economy
• Often cheaper to transport and sell abroad than to process locally
• the Far East is a competitive alternative.

……