With Chancellor Rishi Sunak delivering his Spending Review today, the waste and recycling sector will be listening out for any specific relevant measures.
Spending generally, including for local authorities and other topics such as fuel taxation, will be relevant to the waste sector and no specific environmental taxes are expected. However, in the past the government has said that a tax on incineration (energy from waste) is something which could be introduced should its measures to boost recycling fail.
Speaking to letsrecycle.com this week there was a view from waste sector experts that while an incineration tax remains a future possibility, it is unlikely to be flagged today by the Chancellor, although environmental taxation is now firmly on the Treasury’s radar.
Last year, the then Prime Minister Theresa May reiterated that such a tax could be considered if recycling levels failed to rise in line with aspirations.
The then secretary of state for the environment, Therese Coffey referencing similar points behind the Resources and Waste Strategy, said: “The landfill tax has been important in reducing landfill. As I have just said, we are consulting on measures that build on the resources and waste strategy that we published a few months ago. We have been quite clear that we must ensure that we increase recycling, and we will take further measures if incineration is still proving part of the problem.”
And, environment Minister, Rebecca Pow, has said the government would only consider bringing in an incineration tax “if the wider policies set out in the resources and waste strategy do not deliver our waste ambitions, as laid out in the Environment Bill and the strategy, including higher recycling rates”.
Continue reading further on the LetsRecycle website.
