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Metals Recycling Industry

My hon. Friend tempts me to go on at length about the planning system, which I was not intending to do. However, he is absolutely right. If we look at what we, as a country, will need over the next decade to achieve a substantial changeover from the vast majority of waste going into landfill to the vast majority not going into landfill, we will need a variety of resources of so-called MRFs—materials recycling facilities—and of car reception end recycling facilities. Those facilities either exist at the moment and are under threat, or do not exist and need to be brought about by the effective use of the planning regulations. They will be needed to shift the enormous body of material away from landfill and into other forms of waste processing. The problem is that, in many instances, the planning process will impede the development of those sites rather than enabling them to be achieved on a planned basis. My hon. Friend tempts me to set this issue into perspective. In the south-east, we need to find and develop effectively one MRF every fortnight between now and 2015. That does not look likely to happen. There is a real issue over the whole question of planning and the siting of such facilities and an underlying issue of waste. It is up to the politicians, among other people, to emphasise that if we drive our car into a part-exchange garage and get a new car, it is not the end of our car. It is the same as putting our waste outside our front door and expecting someone to deal with it regardless of the consequences. Emphasising that point should be a watchword of domestic waste disposal. We all have a responsibility to recognise that our communities should be involved in the processing and recycling of waste. Saying that we want the efficient distribution, collection and disposal of waste, while also saying that we, collectively, are not prepared to provide the necessary sites and arrangements to make that happen is a dereliction of our understanding of the whole process. Before my hon. Friend tempted me down the planning route, I was talking about the processing and disposal of 2 million vehicles a year. However, the targets are set to move upwards over the next few years to the challenging target of 95 per cent. recovery, with 85 per cent. recycling and reuse, by 2015. The challenge is not so much in finding the vehicles to make the recovery target, but in ensuring that the vehicle components that are to be recycled or reused can be successfully retrieved, separated and put to good use. Currently, 75 per cent. of a vehicle's volume is its metal, pretty much all of which can be recycled and reused. The main issues with recycling vehicles are cleaning the metal, separating its ferrous and non-ferrous elements so that they are ready for smelting, and effectively retrieving the remaining components. Separating rubber, plastic, textiles, glass and some wood components to meet the higher targets will require not only additional investment but a substantial role for metal recycling yards beyond dealing with metal in its own right. Some of that additional material is recycled, and that is reflected in the overall figures, but much of it is placed into piles and sent to landfill. There does not exist, it seems, a systematic strategy to cope with that residue. In the absence of effective post-shredder sorting, there is no real alternative to landfill, except, perhaps, the energy-from-waste route, where metal recycling and other forms of recycling meet. Can provisions for co-firing and the development of a more effective, banded renewables obligation certificate market for energy from waste, in tandem with combined heat and power, start to take up the slack? If it cannot, it is hard to see how the UK can move from its present, impressive international position on vehicle recycling to the level anticipated for 2015. It is important to address this issue early; we should harness different strands of the recycling industry and government with a task force, perhaps similar to the recent biomass task force, to resolve the issues of moving post-shredder non-metal vehicle residues out of landfill and into the recycling system. One aspect of end-of-life vehicle disposal is of concern, and touches on the underlying theme of metal theft: ELV certificates of destruction. The certificate system is not effective because it allows considerable numbers of vehicles to go missing in the system, and not just literally into hedges. It under-records the vehicles that have been properly disposed of, and therefore under-reports the UK's performance on vehicle recycling. Having destruction certificates that travel more effectively with the relevant vehicles, so that vehicles do not slip through the system, would be an important part of the drive to meet the higher 2015 targets. I started by quoting, with approval, some paragraphs from the beginning of the 2007 waste strategy. If one looks at the list of actions at the end of that document—there are 94 of them—one sees that the words in the opening paragraphs are not really reflected in those actions, at least as far as metals are concerned. Indeed, only one action mentions metals, and that is a partial sentence devoted to aluminium. I do not particularly criticise the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs for that apparent omission. It is a testimony to the success of the metals recycling industry and its genuine achievement in dealing effectively with metal wastes—rapidly and efficiently turning them into quality raw materials—that the waste strategy largely considers they can be left alone to get on with the job. However, as I have demonstrated today, there are challenges and impediments to continuing that effective job and to achieving even greater, more effective performance. It is a mistake to assume that metal recycling is the same as generic waste recycling and involves simply dealing with metal. The danger of applying regulation to metal recycling that applies rightly to other waste streams but is inappropriate to metals is that it becomes an impediment to be overcome, rather than a device that shapes our approach to good waste management. Recent discussions about the review of exemptions for metal recycling sites underline this issue. Changes in storage limits, such as the reduction in exempted storage from 50,000 tonnes to 16,000 tonnes, and reductions in inspection seem to reflect general assumptions about waste and not the specific issues of metal recycling, and they may result in a regime of storage and inspections. Those changes might produce additional regulation with no clear environmental benefit, while introducing an inspection regime that encourages the less compliant, smaller fringe sites that can be a problem to fly in the face of the standards that are common among most of the industry. The metal recycling industry needs a little regulation and a little encouragement to perform outstandingly over the next decade. We will need that kind of performance across the waste industry in the next decade to meet challenging environmental targets and to bring about a rapid reduction in the disposal of waste to landfill. The metals recycling industry can and will play a strong part in that process. I hope that it will receive the necessary support, through legislation, regulation and inspection, to enable it to do so.