Up the garden path? TEEP and household food waste collections

It seems that, following its consultation on changes to municipal waste management in the UK, Defra still proposes that councils should separately collect food waste from households, unless a ‘TEEP’ test determines that separate collections aren’t appropriate.

That might seem sensible – you wouldn’t want to mandate separate collections where they aren’t practicable; and local authorities have been applying TEEP tests to decisions regarding separating dry recycling for years, so they should know how to do it. However, it looks as though the scope and application of the TEEP test in this context may well be both confusing and undesirable. There is a risk it could lead to widespread non-collection of food waste, which would hinder progress towards the higher recycling targets that the Government is setting.

The TEEP test was introduced by an amendment to the Waste (England and Wales) Regulations 2011, which said that four types of dry recycling had to be collected separately, except where doing so wasn’t necessary (in order to facilitate or improve recycling) or practicable (whether technically, economically or environmentally). I’m not going to explore the “TEEP” test in depth – there are already plenty of other articles on Isonomia doing that, along with the Waste Regulations Route Map for those seeking to apply it. The question here is the implications of TEEP for possible future food waste collections.

Origin story

Defra has been promising to do something about food waste since the 25 Year Environment Plan was issued in January 2018. The plan announced goals of “no food waste entering landfill by 2030” (leaving open the possibility of simply incinerating more of it), and zero avoidable waste by 2050. However, no specific measures were announced.

When the resources and waste strategy appeared in December 2018, it proposed a requirement on local authorities to source separate food waste, without exception:

However, in the promised consultation, the TEEP test appeared on the scene:

“We therefore propose to require that from 2023, all local authorities offer all households separate weekly food waste collection….

“Generally food waste should be presented separately from garden waste, so that the food waste can ideally be sent to anaerobic digestion.

“This would be expected in all circumstances except where it was not technically, environmentally or economically practicable to collect this waste separately from other biowaste.”

Mixed collection messages

The language of the consultation document is peculiar and confusing.

The core proposal (Proposal 4 in the document) still seems to be a universal requirement to collect food waste, with the TEEP test used to determine whether it is collected separately, or mixed with garden waste. This would be quite an odd use of the TEEP test. There’s a good argument that separate collections are necessary, because they lead to greater food waste captures than mixed collections. However, the types of homes from which local authorities have the greatest concern about the practicability of collecting food waste would be those that don’t have gardens (and where a mixed food and garden collection therefore isn’t an option) – namely flats.

It is therefore unsurprising that Q19 invited responses on whether there were circumstances where separate food waste collections from flats might not be “practical”. That’s a distinct (but perhaps not unrelated) issue from whether collecting separate from garden waste is practicable.

If you decide to collect food separately from kerbside properties, you might take the view that you can’t extend these collections to flats – but if you set up the system to collect mixed food and garden only, it seems to make it more likely that collecting from flats will be problematic. However, Q19 was framed using the word “practical” rather than “practicable”, and Defra doesn’t seem to be suggesting a TEEP test as a means of deciding whether collections from flats and other challenging types of property should be required.

A majority of both individual and organisational respondents to the consultation favoured source separation. However, while most of the individual respondents that expressed a view thought that flats should receive collections, more than half of organisational respondents thought that there were circumstances where collections from flats wouldn’t be practical.

Defra has recognised (in its summary of responses from organisations) that its proposals are somewhat confusing.

“There is an apparent contradiction between Proposal 4 in the main consultation document and the Executive Summary of the Impact Assessment. Proposal 4 refers to “all kerbside properties and flats” having at least a weekly separate food waste collection. However, the Impact Assessment refers to the preferred option 3M, in which only low rise properties are required to have separate food waste collections. This requires clarification.”

Defra’s response to consultation doesn’t provide any further clarification, but implies that an exemption for flats may be under consideration.

We will work with LAs and others to consider how best to deliver this requirement to take account of local circumstances. Particular considerations include providing a separate food waste collection for properties in densely populated areas and especially flats and properties above commercial premises as well as very rural areas.

Unfortunately, though, Defra doesn’t yet seem to have recognised the need to examine the relationship between the two issues of practicability – flats and mixed organics collections – or to have reached a clear view on the circumstances under which food waste collections might not be required.

TEEP reservations

Defra might decide that councils should apply a TEEP test covering both issues. That might seem appealing, but I have substantial reservations about it.

First and foremost, with no clear standard against which to test, and very limited enforcement, the TEEP test has been something of a barrier to any real change in dry recycling. Without proper guidance and enforcement, a TEEP-based exemption would be likely to undermine Defra’s aims. But that is far from the only problem.

A purported advantage of the TEEP test is that it is already familiar. However, the TEEP language in the Waste Regulations is derived from Articles 10 and 11 of the 2008 Waste Framework Directive (WFD) – but the latest revision of the WFD has seen the word “practicable”  disappear. Nevertheless, the impact of the change seems likely to be subtle; but until we see revised guidance on the directive, it won’t be clear how substantive it may be.

After Brexit, England might opt to continue to use the old wording – but it would create something of an anomaly. Or it might use the new wording, in which case the test will no longer be the familiar one.

The biggest change in the WFD wording affects “economic practicability” – the most important test, as most technical and environmental issues can be resolved at a price. Now, member states need to take into account “the potential for efficiency improvements in waste collection and treatment” when considering costs. That suggests it isn’t sufficient just to look at bolting a food waste collection onto an existing service, but one should also look at whether service changes could improve the economic case.

Generally, WRAP modelling suggests that the cheapest way to provide food waste collections to kerbside properties is alongside multistream collections that have a weekly dry recycling pass. With the costs of managing packaging waste soon to be met by producers under a revamped producer responsibility system, if the new language is adopted, many councils would need to undertake a more holistic review of their service provision as part of the TEEP test.

Defra-nately maybe

Regardless of whether the old or new test will be applied, another of Defra’s proposals makes the test puzzling. In the consultation, Defra said that:

“[T]he government will ensure that local authorities are resourced to meet new costs arising from this policy.

Let’s leave aside the issue of whether this is fair on authorities that have already incurred costs to collect food waste, or banked collection frequency savings without collecting food. If Defra meets the cost of future changes, any food waste service is bound to be economically practicable for the authority.

Should councils instead be asking what would be practicable for Defra? Will it be Defra that applies the economic test – or perhaps the whole test, given the key role the economic element plays? Or will Defra end up taking a nation-wide view on what is practicable, in the way that Scotland did with its legislation on separate food waste collections? For now, we just don’t know.

Despite a lengthy period of policy development, and a detailed consultation, it still remains wholly unclear what Defra’s proposals for separate food waste collection will mean in practice. The consultation suggests that a universal requirement to collect food waste separately would be a popular approach, but Defra seems to be considering a rather more limited policy, and deploying a test that has previously led to confusion and unenforceability. If Defra is set on meeting the recycling targets it has proposed, there’s a serious need for a rethink before Defra’s next consultation on the topic, expected towards the end of 2019.

Featured image: bob walker (CC BY-SA 2.0), via Flickr.