Biffa Waste Services has invited the ePolitix.com Forum to comment on the costs of delivering the government's waste strategy.

A spokesman for Defra told ePolitix.com: "The government recognises the importance of minimising waste and re-using, recycling or recovering value from what we do produce.

"Our Strategy is underpinned by the waste hierarchy, which follows this order, and our policies, particularly in the light of the Strategy Unit report on waste, reflect these principles. The aim is to reduce the environmental impacts of waste management and reduce the use of natural resources.

"In the last year in particular, there has been a great deal of progress in the area of waste. Adopting new structures and employing proven project management techniques government is determined to deliver real progress on waste, and provide the public with value for money."

Forum Response: Biffa Waste Services

Peter Jones, external affairs director of Biffa, told ePolitix.com: "From our perspective in Biffa, the sooner we embark on this process, the better. Clearly government has a leadership role in ensuring that these costs are backed up by credible research and reinforced by appropriate academic and independent audit bodies.

"Nevertheless, we do not disagree with the overall scale and loading of the costs - clearly the devil is in the detail when it comes to differences between the lower cost of capital composting operations (which need more labour) and more capital intensive (but more labour efficient) high tech systems involving incineration, gasification or biological digestion.

"The frustration for us, at the moment, lies in the government's inability to appreciate the scale of these cost differentials which result in the total inhibiting of any investment in technologies to deliver their strategy.

"Unless Treasury accept the urgent need to reach a £35 level of landfill taxes by 2005/06 (rather than 2011 as is currently indicated by the chancellor) then we will simply fail to provide the necessary price signals - both to encourage waste generators to minimise and the waste processing industry to invest in more advanced treatment techniques.

"In a worst case scenario, we will simply end up delaying the economic signals to a point where waste will continue to flow and we will have closed our existing exit routes in the form of substantial numbers of landfill sites. That would be a catastrophe. There needs to be some serious enquiry by parliament into the nature of this timetable and the way it will affect particularly regions and material streams.

"Additional delay will also result in the manufacturing capacity for such technologies to be overwhelmed sometime in 2009/10 by a demand they will be incapable of meeting. Ironically, most of those suppliers are based in mainland Europe, the US and Canada. We haven't even begun to tackle the issue of how the UK could benefit from this revolution in industrial morphology."

Forum Response: Envirowise

Dr Martin Gibson, director of Envirowise told ePolitix.com: "The government has recognised that the UK must do more to reduce the amount of waste it produces. There are many arguments as to how this should be done and there is little doubt that more recovery and treatment infrastructure will be needed. However, it is also clear that it is better to reduce the production of waste in the first place before you reuse, recycle and then dispose of it.

"At present, few businesses recognise the true cost of waste. Studies by Envirowise have consistently shown that, on average, the true cost of waste is actually 10 times the disposal cost. The rest of the cost arises from inefficient use of raw materials and energy and from having to handle and store waste. The response to this forum brief from the Construction Products Association gives a similar picture.

"Recognition of the true cost of waste should be enough to make most companies recognise that reducing waste leads to considerable cost savings. However, it seems that few companies understand the true cost. The low cost of disposal makes it appear, often erroneously, that companies can get better returns by spending their effort on other activities.

"Increasing the cost of landfill may encourage more companies to look at reducing waste. Most companies will find that they can make immediate cost savings and often these are greater than the total disposal cost of waste. The majority of savings come from reduced material costs. Reducing unnecessary use of materials has huge environmental benefits, not just those associated with reduced waste."

Forum Response: Construction Products Association

Rita Singh, policy development executive at the Construction Products Association, told ePolitix.com: "Treatment options need to be combined with reuse and recovery options if we are to truly address the issue of improving resource management.

"By taking the construction industry as an example, it is estimated that approximately 8 per cent of new/unused material ends up in skips on site as waste, much of this ending up in landfill. Assuming the total Construction and Demolition waste is roughly 90mT (CIRIA mass balance report), the eight per cent accounts for 7.2mT of unused material being treated as waste.

"One of the key issues that the Construction Products Association is pursuing is to encourage clients, designers and contractors to work closely and during the design stage with manufacturers to design-out this waste.

"This has the advantage of not only ensuring that just the right amount of material is delivered when required. It also reduces the need to develop bespoke products as standard products can be incorporated into the design from an early stage, thereby also reducing maintenance/replacement costs.

"Where waste is generated, a clear definition that does not hinder innovative application of by-products otherwise termed waste is imperative.

"Finally, government must explore and not restrict the treatment options available to deal with waste. Increasingly as the EC is setting stricter targets for recovery and recycling of waste within a competitive global climate, incentives through various initiatives should be introduced as early as possible."

Forum Response: Institute of Directors

Geraint Day, environment policy adviser at the IoD, told ePolitix.com: "To be fair the government's waste strategy has good intentions but a number of weaknesses. Of particular concern is the very patchy local government recycling schemes."