The previous government’s waste-reduction targets did not prove testing enough to stretch most departments. Joshua Chambers looks at their impact, and examines how cutting waste can also cut public expenditure.
Speak to a civil servant about departmental waste, and you may struggle: the targets are rather tricky to pronounce. ‘Sustainable Operations on the Government Estate’ is something of a mouthful; the system is often referred to as the ‘soggy’ targets instead. And there may be another explanation for the term: the SOGE waste targets have been criticised as a little wet.
Launched in June 2006, the SOGE targets aimed to reduce departmental waste by five per cent by next April, relative to their waste output in 2004-5. Many departments have long since beaten these targets, with the Department for Education [then called the Department for Children, Schools and Families] reducing waste by 61.3 per cent in 2009-10 alone.Carl von Reibnitz is the acting head of fire, health, safety and sustainable operations at the department for Communities and Local Government (CLG), and heads up his department’s efforts in this area. “The targets may have sounded challenging at the time, but most organisations have already met them,” he says. “The key message is that we need to be more ambitious. There’s a real focus on reducing carbon emissions and direct emissions from offices at the moment, and there’s a risk that we forget the wider areas of sustainability.”
Cutting down on waste emissions isn’t just good for the planet; it can provide significant cost benefits. According to Von Reibnitz, one of CLG’s largest waste products is paper, “which clearly costs a lot of money,” he says. “In a world where we use more electronic media, we need to question why we are using so much.”
All office supplies need to be looked at through this lens, he says. For example, if a department is reducing occupancy in one building, the furniture should be reused in another. When CLG cannot reuse its furniture, he explains, it passes it on to an organisation which distributes it to voluntary sector bodies.
As well as reusing equipment, departments should procure less in the future. Computing equipment, Von Reibnitz says, is often renewed every two years; he argues that departments should determine whether they really need to upgrade, or whether their existing computers are still up to the task.
The SOGE targets are being overseen by the Office of Government Commerce (OGC), which recently moved into the Cabinet Office as part of the Efficiency and Reform Group. The OGC would also have overseen new targets, called Sustainable Development in Government targets, which were set to be introduced next year but are currently being reviewed by the coalition government. The targets would have set a much higher target: reducing waste products by 20 per cent by 2016-17, against a baseline of 2010-11 levels.
Previous performance was also to be taken into account – if a department exceeded the target in one year, it would have had a lower target for the next.
Von Reibnitz believes it is unlikely that the new targets will be scrapped, thanks to the coalition government’s desire to be the greenest ever. Ministers may even make the targets tougher, he suggests; not just because of the new push on sustainability, but also because cutting waste cuts costs – an argument that government will find compelling?
