The Essex waste strategy (known officially as the Joint Municipal Waste Management Strategy) sets out the key objectives and targets for the management of municipal waste in the county.

The Waste Strategy Overview

Under the Waste and Emissions Trading (WET) Act 2003 all Councils who are responsible for the disposal and collection of waste have a duty to develop a strategy setting out how they will manage municipal* waste in the future.

*Municipal waste is household waste and any other waste that is collected for treatment and disposal by a local authority.

In 2002, 2005 and 2008 we asked local people what they wanted to do with waste in Essex. Essex householders and communities told us that we should be changing the way we manage waste, with a drive towards waste prevention, high recycling and composting, and minimising waste to landfill. The waste strategy is Essex’s plan for ensuring that we achieve this change. 

Along with high recycling and composting our preference is also for new treatment facilities using Mechanical Biological Treatment (MBT) technologies which can process ‘black bag’ or untreated waste to reduce the volume of the waste, recover further material for recycling and stabilise the waste so that if it is landfilled it does not emit greenhouse gases.

In terms of recycling we are heading in the right direction as we are now recycling and composting 42% of our waste (in 2008/09). This is set to increase with kerbside collections of recyclable materials expanding across Essex and the Recycling Centres for Household Waste (RCHW) accepting and recycling more materials than ever before.

Our strategy for dealing with waste in the future is:

• We will work hard to reduce the amount of waste produced in the first place and re-use more of the waste that is produced.

• Our ambition is collectively to achieve 60% recycling of household waste by 2020. This could be achieved through a combination of further improvement in the performance of recycling and composting kerbside collection schemes and the Recycling Centres for Household Waste, and the recovery of recyclable materials through new treatment plants.

• We favour composting technologies such as anaerobic digestion (AD), for source segregated organic wastes. AD is a form of biotreatment and produces a gas which can be used to generate 100% renewable electricity.

• Whilst we can work on reducing the amount of waste produced and recycle as much of if it as possible, there will always be some waste that still needs to be disposed of. For this we propose to introduce new treatment plants using Mechanical Biological Treatment (MBT). MBT processes any ‘black bag’ waste and recovers further material for recycling. Part of the remaining material can either be manufactured into a fuel for energy production or can stabilised and sent to landfill, or used in land restoration or remediation projects.

The Joint Municipal Waste Management Strategy for Essex was approved by Essex County Council’s Full Council on 15 July 2008. The approved version of the Waste Strategy is available in the Related documents section. To date, 11 District and Borough Councils have also adopted the waste strategy.

You can see what happens to waste in Essex in an animated version called The journey of waste.