MEMORANDUM BY CLEANAWAY TECHNICAL WASTE
(DSW 46)
1. Cleanaway Technical Waste welcomes the
opportunity to contribute to the Committee's inquiry into the
Government's Waste Strategy. This paper will address in particular
two of the topics identified in the Committee's terms of reference:
— Reducing the amount of waste, especially
hazardous waste, consigned to landfill.
— Reducing, and managing more effectively,
hazardous waste.
2. Cleanaway Technical Waste operates, at
Ellesmere Port, the largest commercial high-temperature incinerator
in the UK. Commissioned in 1990, it was then and remains a state-of-the-art
plant designed to achieve not only existing emissions limits but
also the foreseeable level of performance required by both UK
and EU authorities. At the time of commissioning, options to include
a CHP element were rejected precisely in order to ensure that
the highest levels of pollution abatement could be achieved. Rapid
quenching of gases, for example, ensures minimal dioxin production.
3. Broadly, this paper will argue that the
Government's policies, as set out in the Waste Strategy published
earlier this year, will not deliver a sustainable hazardous waste
management regime in the UK. In particular:
— A more proactive stance will be needed
to ensure an orderly transfer of certain hazardous wastes form
landfill, as required by the Landfill Directive.
— The effective and efficient management
of hazardous waste requires that commercial high-temperature incinerators
should be regulated in a comparable manner to cement/lime kilns,
which is currently not the case.
— Unless regulatory disparities are
eliminated, in relation to emissions limits and import regulations,
serious questions will remain about the long-term sustainability
of a commercial high-temperature incineration sector in the UK.
This is addressed below, as are the implications
for the UK if indigenous high-temperature incineration were to
disappear —an event that cannot be ruled out.
Hazardous Waste out of Landfill
4. At present, more than two million tonnes
of hazardous waste are landfilled each year in the UK. Of these,
half a million tonnes of liquid wastes will no longer be permitted
to go to landfill once the directive is in force.
5. Most of the debate about the implementation
of the Landfill Directive in the UK has focused on the implications
for municipal waste. To the extent that any consideration has
been given to it, there appears to be a view that waste producers
will increasingly treat hazardous wastes in-house (see, for example,
Government response to the House of Lords Select Committee on
Europe (HL83/1997-98). In fact, there are few grounds for believing
that industry is well placed to do this. In Cleanaway's opinion,
an urgent assessment is required of industry's capability to deal
with waste outside the landfill option. On this basis, a firm
timescale could be established for the removal of the most toxic
substances from landfill. This should also mean that these wastes
would begin to be treated by the Best Practicable Environmental
Option.
6. Cleanaway estimates that 250,000-300,000
tonnes of hazardous wastes—particularly paint wastes, tars,
gums and resins—could already be disposed of by alternative
means. Other types of hazardous waste at present being consigned
to landfill will require new technologies to be developed in order
for other methods of disposal to become viable. This in turn will
require investment in R&D and ultimately in new plant, which
will need planning permission and regulatory permits. In other
words, since there is a long lead time to full implementation
of the directive, the Government should make use of this period
to plan an orderly changeover. This will avoid—notwithstanding
the time available—a last-minute rush to divert waste from
landfill.
7. As indicated above, the requirement to
comply with the directive provides an opportunity to dispose of
waste using the BPEO. The Waste Strategy repeats a long-familiar
refrain that these should be developed for hazardous waste streams
(Part 1, para 3.57), but in practice little has been done over
the years to take this forward. Several years ago draft Waste
Management Paper 26F outlined which hazardous wastes should be
banned from landfill sites, but it has never been acted upon.
In the view of Cleanaway Technical Waste, the principles of this
Paper should now be implemented.
8. In sum, the advantages of planning now
a phased removal of hazardous wastes from landfill, rather than
waiting for the latest possible date to implement the directive,
include (in addition to realising environmental gains earlier
than would otherwise be the case):
— Spreading the burden on industry—other
forms of disposal than landfill will be more expensive
— Enabling new (or more cost-effective)
technologies to be developed where they will be needed
— Giving a boost to the UK's environmental
technology industry
— Enabling current spare capacity
in the HTI sector to be utilised.
Managing Hazardous Waste
9. At para 6.23 of Part 2 of the Waste Strategy,
the Government states that "it recognises the importance
of having available a network of high-temperature incinerators,
suitable for the disposal of hazardous organic wastes and other
wastes where high temperature incineration is the (BPEO)".
Regrettably, the policies pursued by the Government and the UK
regulatory authorities threaten to undermine the Government's
intentions in this regard. Unless there is a change in policy,
the long-term sustainability of the commercial high-temperature
incineration sector is far from assured.
10. There are at present three merchant
high-temperature incinerators in the UK, down from four in 1999.
Despite the fact that the Waste Strategy canvasses a possible
requirement to expand HTI capacity, there is in reality no prospect
of any additional capacity coming on stream within the next decade,
if ever. The reasons for this are as follows:
— Any prospective commercial operator
can see what has happened in terms of the moving of regulatory
goalposts in the 1990s, and would be unlikely to commit the enormous
sums needed to fund a new plant;
— At the moment, the prospects are
for a shrinkage in waste volumes as a result of Government policy
and regulatory activity;
— Throughput has been declining and
profitability has been reduced (possibly even eliminated in one
case) and the rate of return on capital would not justify such
an investment now;
— Even if an operator could be found
who was prepared to invest, the likelihood of planning permission
and regulatory consent being obtained on a satisfactory timescale
(if at all) is remote. During the late 1980's some six applications
for hazardous waste incinerators were refused at the planning
stage.
11. There is no mystery over the HTI sector's
lack of competitiveness. Since 1993, the market for hazardous
waste incineration has been severely distorted in part by Government
policy but mostly as a result of the regulator's approach (HMIP,
then EA). In that year, the cement industry began to burn hazardous
waste as a fuel as a means of cutting costs. We will not rehearse
here the history of the Environment Agency's regulation of the
cement industry, on which the Committee's predecessor held two
thorough inquires to which Cleanaway were pleased to give evidence.
12. Suffice it to report here that the share
of the hazardous waste incineration market captured by the cement
industry now exceeds half and that the range of wastes being used
by the cement and lime kilns continues to grow. This process was
given a boost last year by the publication of a report by ChemSystems,
commissioned by the EA, which was interpreted by some waste producers
as giving them the green light to send a wider range of wastes
to the blenders who "mix" hazardous wastes for use as
a fuel by the cement manufacturers (and in some cases are owned
by them).
13. The ChemSystems report has been the
subject of a critique by the environmental consultancy Entec,
commissioned by Cleanaway Technical Waste. Entec questioned the
validity of the methodology employed by ChemSystems and accordingly
the conclusions reached. Cleanaway has separately corresponded
with the Committee on this point.
14. At the same time as the UK market continues
to be distorted, the Government is proposing to close off another
market for the UK high-temperature incineration sector. In its
Plan on the Export and Import of Waste, issued in May 2000, the
Government canvassed the withdrawal of the right to import hazardous
waste from Ireland, which would leave only Portugal within the
OECD as a possible source of hazardous waste for the UK industry.
Once again, however the cement industry is at a regulatory advantage.
Because waste which is used as a fuel in a cement kiln is classified
as being imported for "recovery", whereas waste consigned
to a dedicated incinerator is regarded as being sent for "disposal",
the cement industry may import hazardous waste into the UK but
Cleanaway and the other operator in the HTI sector may not.
Environmental Considerations
15. The disparity in regulation of the two
sectors—dedicated purpose-built high-temperature incinerators
and the cement industry—is having a quantifiable environmental
impact on the UK. The attached tables demonstrate the much more
permissive emissions regime for the UK cement industry compared
with the HTI sector, as well as the much poorer environmental
performance of the cement manufacturers.
16. Given the recent lowering (by a factor
of 10) of the acceptable threshold for dioxin exposure by the
US EPA, the figures for dioxin production by some cement kilns
are particularly noteworthy. It is all the more remarkable that
in the context of the EPA's review of dioxins, the Environment
Agency in the UK should recently have permitted dioxin emission
limits of 0.8ng/m3 for a number of cement kilns. This is a significant
relaxation of the limit imposed on hazardous waste incinerators
of 0.1ng/m3.
17. The emission standards at present applied
to the cement sector—relaxed though they are—could
become even more permissive if a legal challenge mounted by Castle
Cement is successful. Castle Cement has been given leave to apply
for judicial review of the Environment Agency's decision—reflecting
the view of the Committee's predecessor—that hazardous waste,
when mixed to make fuel for cement kilns, should continue nevertheless
to be classified as waste. Since there is little or no change
in the chemical composition of the waste, this would appear to
be common sense. If the Agency's view were to change, following
a successful challenge, Castle Cement and the other UK manufacturers
would be freed from the modest constraints imposed upon them by
EU directives applicable to waste. Not only would this have serious
environmental consequences for the UK, it would almost certainly
hasten the end of the UK's commercial HTI sector.
Conclusions and Recommendations
18. The HTI sector is vital to the UK's
competitiveness: HTI remains the only disposal route for some
of the most hazardous wastes produced by significant British industries.
If there were no indigenous HTI sector, UK companies would have
to export waste for disposal; the UK would then, arguably, be
in breach of the Basel Convention.
19. The HTI sector in the UK is under severe
pressure because its markets have been increasingly eroded by
the cement industry, which has a huge competitive advantage owing
to its more relaxed regulatory regime. Waste throughput in the
HTI plants, already falling, is likely to fall further because:
— The EA's ChemSystems report is being
interpreted by industry as the go-ahead to consign a wider range
of waste to cement kilns—but it should not bear this interpretation.
— The Government is proposing to close
off the Irish import market to the HTI sector.
— The competitiveness of the HTI sector
will be further eroded if Castle Cement's legal challenge succeeds
and the EA re-classifies hazardous waste used as a fuel as essentially
a fuel rather than essentially waste.
20. If the UK wishes to ensure that it retains
an HTI capability—not to mention to protect the environment
to the same degree wherever hazardous waste is burnt—the
Government should:
— Ensure that the full regulatory regime
applicable to hazardous waste is applied to the cement manufacturers.
— Ensure that waste burnt as a fuel
remains classified, for regulatory purposes, as waste.
— Continue to permit waste imports
from Ireland for disposal.
— Treat hazardous waste imports whether
for burning in cement kilns or in high-temperature incinerators
as the same for regulatory purposes.
— Ensure that a phased removal of hazardous
waste out of landfill begins as soon as possible.
— Agree BPEO for different hazardous
waste streams, within the context of IPPC.
Cleanaway Technical Waste commends these ideas
to the Sub-committee.
September 2000
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