This section highlights other cross-cutting drivers in planning, establishing and maintaining a waste prevention plan. It covers:
- The Compact
- Localism, and
- National Indicators
- National indicators are no longer policy, but still may be useful to refer to.
- The Localism Act may or could encourage waste prevention activities such as services to collect items for re-use.
Crosscutting drivers
The Compact
The Compact is an agreement between the government (Cabinet Office) and the third sector outlining a way of working to improve the relationship for mutual advantage.
It is supported by an Accountability and Transparency Guide outlining steps to take at national and local level. This could include waste prevention activities delivered by the third sector such as collections, repair and sale for re-use, and community waste prevention initiatives.
Localism Act 2011
The Localism Act gives third sector and other groups the right to express an interest in taking over the running of a local authority service or any part of a service - the "community right to challenge". The local authority must consider and respond to any such challenge; this might mean opening a new competitive bidding process for the service in which the challenging organisation can bid. This could include waste prevention activities such as services to collect items for re-use.
The Act includes provisions for;
- community ‘right to bid’ - local groups will be given time to raise capital and to bid to buy assets that have been identified as having a value to the local community.
- "community right to build" - local community groups can build new developments without planning permission, if they win the support of 50 per cent of local residents.
- some of the money raised from the Community Infrastructure Levy, which developers pay to councils when they build new projects, to be passed to the local neighbourhoods where development takes place.
National Indicators
National Indicators NI 191 (Residual household waste per household), NI 192 (Household waste re-used, recycled and composted) and NI 193 (Municipal waste landfilled) were withdrawn in March 2011 but the levels of ambition adopted by your authority with respect to these former Indicators may still apply.
Note that home composting (and community composting) of garden and/ or food waste is not considered waste prevention under the definition of the revised Waste Framework Directive (Directive 2008/98/EC) as it does not reduce the actual production of waste. However, this hub does give guidance in relation to home and community composting.
Digest of Waste and Resource Statistics
The Defra publication, Digest of Waste and Resource Statistics - 2015 edition, contains six data sets, referred to as 'waste prevention metrics' which have been chosen as being suitable indicators, taken collectively, for monitoring waste prevention.
These are:
- Raw Material Consumption per unit of GDP
- Waste arisings by sector (construction and demolition, commerce, industry, household)
- Hazardous waste arisings by sector
- Waste arising per unit of gross value added for the commercial and industrial sector.
- GHG emissions from landfill.
- Gross value added of the repair and reuse sector.
Developing metrics to serve as indicators to monitor progress on waste prevention is a key part of the Waste Prevention Programme for England.