The UK should err on the side of caution in building treatment infrastructure to make sure that recycling ambitions are not jeopardised, consultancy Eunomia said today.
Eunomia’s estimate of the treatment gap differs from the ESA (picture: shutterstock)
Prompted by a call for more waste treatment infrastructure this morning (30 November) by the Environmental Services Association, Eunomia reiterated its past thoughts that its own estimates are that no further treatment capacity is needed other than already identified.
In its response to the ESA report, Eunomia accepted that the report, ‘UK Residual Waste: 2030 Market Review’ attempts to resolve the disputes that have arisen over the UK’s future need for residual waste treatment.
The consultancy noted: “While this aim is to be welcomed, and the report makes some useful contributions, it risks sowing further confusion. The Review prominently presents scenarios that bear no relation to the current, or likely future, reality.”
And, Eunomia claims that “By excluding RDF exports and additional EfW capacity from some of its headline results, it ignores 4.5 million tonnes (mt) of capacity that the report itself identifies. Taking this into account would significantly alter the report’s findings.”
Peter Jones of Eunomia who spoke of a need to ‘err on the side of caution’
Reasoning that the report has over-estimated the capacity gap by 5.8mt it said “this is because it under-estimates current known treatment capacity and overstates likely future waste arisings, by failing to take account of:
- 1.8mt of net capacity provided by MBT
- 2mt of waste that is likely still to be landfilled in the future
- 1mt of potentially lower waste arisings
- 1mt of likely RDF exports, above the 2.5mt allowed for in the review, taking the total to the current level of 3.5mt per annum.”
In a statement, Eunomia argued: “The combined effect of these unrealistic assumptions is to reduce the headline capacity gap by some 10mt, meaning that in all but the ‘do nothing’ scenario, where recycling rates remain broadly at their current level, there would be no need for further treatment capacity. This would be broadly in line with Eunomia’s position.”
Bullish
Eunomia principal consultant Peter Jones said: “Whilst this report has clearly tried to take on board a wide range of views, it has done little to resolve the debate in this area. Instead, it takes an unrealistically bullish approach to many of the key assumptions. It therefore significantly overstates the UK’s need for residual waste treatment infrastructure, thereby risking the building of more costly infrastructure than we need.”
“In planning for residual waste treatment, we should – if anything – err on the side of caution so as not to limit our recycling ambitions today and those that we might develop in the future.”
The post Caution needed over treatment gap, warns Eunomia appeared first on letsrecycle.com.
Source: letsrecycle.com Waste Managment
