The Environmental Services Association (ESA) has welcomed the recommendations made by the Climate Change Committee in its Seventh Carbon Budget today (26 February 2025) but highlighted that the recycling and waste sector needs “investable” policy conditions to decarbonise at both pace and scale.
The CCC’s Seventh Carbon Budget points out that the recycling and waste sector is currently the 8th highest-emitting sector in the UK economy and, in 2022, accounted for 6% of UK emissions or 24.9 MtCO2e. For this reason, the ESA has today reconfirmed its commitment to its own sectoral strategy to achieve net-zero by 2040. However, the trade body has warned that achieving this goal requires swift, long-term and well-designed policy interventions to unlock investment in new circular economy infrastructure; zero-carbon vehicles; carbon-capture and other measures.
For recycling and waste management to contribute to net-zero, the CCC today said that the UK will need to achieve a combined recycling rate (across household and non-household waste) of 68% by 2035, up from 47% in 2021, and that no new Energy-from-Waste facilities should be permitted without the deployment of carbon capture and storage (CCS) by 2045. However, it also recognised that the sector could, by 2050, also achieve five million tonnes of CO2e removals annually by treating biodegradable waste in EfW fitted with carbon capture. The CCC also calls for the “near elimination” of landfill by 2040, as well as a ban on biodegradable waste to landfill from 2028.
Head of Climate and Energy Policy at the ESA, Charlotte Rule, said: “Despite recent political headwinds globally, the urgent need to decarbonise our economy and address climate change has not diminished, and we remain committed to our sectoral strategy of achieving net-zero emissions by 2040.
We agree with the CCCs recommendations and, as a membership body, are actively pursuing the outcomes it concludes are needed for the recycling and waste sector to play its important role in meeting the UK’s net-zero targets.
Achieving sectoral net-zero, as the CCC recognises, will require a step-change in recycling performance to drive down waste volumes and remove plastics from the residual waste stream. This, in part, will be achieved by implementing the long-awaited Collection and Packaging Reforms, as well as new efforts to stimulate a more circular economy across a range of sectors – currently being developed by the Government’s Circular Economy Task Force. Without dramatic improvements to recycling performance and residual waste reduction, any other measures we take to reduce emissions associated with waste will be fighting an uphill battle.
Alongside recycling, achieving net-zero will necessitate measures to decarbonise treatment of the remaining residual waste, which is why our sector’s inclusion in the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS); alongside support for carbon capture and the cessation of sending biodegradable waste to landfill, all remain essential tools to shape this outcome. However, the emerging policy landscape is some way off creating investable conditions in residual waste decarbonisation and government must ensure that the ETS drives the correct behaviour through pragmatic mechanisms that ensure the carbon content of waste is fairly allocated to producers to deliver a clear signal to decarbonise.”
ENDS
