Memorandum submitted by the Environmental
Industries Commission (X13)
INTRODUCTION
The Environmental Industries Commission (EIC)
was launched in 1995 to give the environmental technology and
services industry a strong and effective voice with Government.
With over 240 Member companies—over 150
of which are involved in sustainable waste management or land
remediation—EIC has grown to be the largest trade association
in Europe for the environmental technology and services industry.
It enjoys the support of leading politicians from all three major
parties, industrialists, trade union leaders, environmentalists
and academics.
EIC supports the objectives of the Landfill
Directive to reduce the landfilling of hazardous waste. EIC's
Member companies provide a number of technologies and services
to respond to this legislation by reducing the quantities of hazardous
waste arising. However there are a number of key barriers to the
successful take-up and use of these services and technologies
which we have focused on below.
1. Implications of Landfill Directive for
Contaminated Land Remediation
Effective mechanisms to clean up contaminated
land are key to the Government's objectives to redevelop brownfield
sites, including to the target to build 60% of housing on previously
used land. This was recognised in the Urban Taskforce report published
in 1999.
The type of clean-up solutions used are also
crucial to the Government's objectives to reduce landfilling of
waste—and hazardous waste in particular.
According to the Government's Hazardous Waste
Forum, some 60% of all hazardous waste is contaminated soil produced
when contaminated sites are cleaned up. However there are a number
of alternative treatment techniques which can clean up contaminated
soil either for re-use or disposal as non-hazardous waste. These
solutions are vital to reducing the demand for landfill in general;
demand for the very limited hazardous waste landfill capacity
in particular; and also to reducing clean-up costs.
The Landfill Directive has led to a dramatic
increase in gate prices for hazardous waste landfill. This has
put under threat the Government regeneration objectives by adding
significant cost to regeneration projects on contaminated land.
However it is a positive driver for alternative
treatment techniques which can help minimise use of landfill.
And these alternative technologies can play a key role in keeping
land remediation costs down. EIC recognises that these alternative
techniques are not suitable in all cases and other mechanisms,
such as fiscal/financial support for the remediation of brownfield
land will be needed to mitigate the impacts of the Landfill Directive.
However we will concentrate on support for alternative technologies
in this submission.
1.1 Alternative Treatment Techniques for Land
Remediation
Alternative techniques for remediation of contaminated
soils have an important role to play in filling the gap left by
decreasing landfill availability and increasing landfill costs.
Currently accounting for some 10-20% of remediation, most practitioners
would agree that there is potential to increase this towards the
much higher percentages seen elsewhere in Europe, given the right
economic and regulatory framework. An illustration of the potential
role of on-site remediation is given by the increasing numbers
of licensed technologies under the current Mobile Plant licensing
regime. (At beginning of 2004 there were 130 MPLs in place with
48 companies, covering some 20-25 techniques or variants).
Alternative techniques will not be able to help
to significantly fill the landfill gap unless there is clarity
and consistency in regulation of such technologies. EIC is aware
of and has contributed to work in several areas carried out by
EA and DEFRA to address these issues, but is increasingly concerned
about the speed with which clear results are emerging. Below we
have listed the key regulatory barriers to alternative treatment
techniques for contaminated soils.
1.2 Barriers to Reuse of Remediated Soils
At present throughout the UK there is a rather
confusing situation on the reuse of remediation soils which urgently
requires clarification. Remediation of the soils is generally
covered by a Mobile Plant Licence, but this does not cover the
reuse of the soil on completion of the remediation to a risk-assessed
standard. At present in England and Wales there is an enforcement
position to the affect that the Environment Agency won't normally
take enforcement action over the reuse of such soils. Clearly
this is an unclear position and not one that developers investing
millions of pounds in site redevelopment see as a risk-free solution.
The only alternative is to use an exemption
to the Waste Management Regulations and these are awkward to use
and none have been drafted specifically for the reuse of remediated
soils. This uncertainty has been compounded by the recent ECJ
Van de Walle case.
Clearly this is a confusing situation and, combined
with the various other regulatory barriers, it is one of the main
reasons why developers are reluctant to use alternative treatment
technologies.
We would therefore urge Defra to clarify in
the revised "11/94" guidance on definition of waste
it is currently working on that, subject to assessment on a case
by case basis, soil normally will be considered to have ceased
to be waste in the following circumstances:
(a) Soils remediated on-site to a risk-assessed
standard agreed with the Environment Agency to be reused within
the development.
(b) Soils remediated at an off-site soil
treatment centre to a risk-assessed standard agreed with the Environment
Agency as suitable for their re-use at a specific receiving site
(either the same site as removed from, or another development).
(c) Soils stabilised on-site to an Environment
Agency agreed risk-assessed leachability and permeability standard.
We would also urge that Defra clarify that clean
soils moved and reused within a development project have not entered
the waste stream.
1.3 Lack of Exemptions
Introduction of specific exemptions into waste
management licensing to cover small remediation projects and the
reuse of soils would also be a very helpful step forward.
We responded to the Defra consultation last
year on amending non-hazardous exemptions to the Waste Management
Licensing regulations (and indeed contributed to the thinking
running up to this consultation).
We urge Defra to issue these exemptions without
further delay.
1.4 Remediation Permitting
As you are aware, the EIC and the Brownfield
industry have been lobbying since 1996 for a simple regulatory
system under which beneficial soil remediation can be controlled.
Since 1998 the industry has been able to make
some progress using the Mobile Plant Licensing system. However
this has major shortcomings. The management time and cost of maintaining
a number of Mobile Plant Licences for a typical small to medium
sized remediation company can be in excess of £150,000.00
per year. As the EIC have been saying for many years, this is
not the way to promote the sustainable re-use of soils.
EIC worked closely with Defra on the remediation
permitting aspect of the Waste Permitting Review and were broadly
happy with the approach they had developed. We were therefore
very disappointed to hear that the Waste Permitting Review was
suspended with seemingly no consideration as to the effect on
this key aim of the Review.
We are very pleased, however, that Defra is
now working with the Cabinet Office and ourselves to get work
on this area restarted.
2. Hazardous Waste and Enforcement
A key concern for our industry is enforcement
of Landfill Directive controls on Hazardous Waste. Violations
can range from mis-description of waste to fly-tipping.
It is clear that this is a lucrative market
for criminals and that the Environment Agency is ill-resourced
to enforce controls on hazardous waste.
Failure to effectively enforce environmental
legislation damages not only the environment but is also a major
block to innovation needed to provide alternative solutions to
disposal of hazardous waste. Our industry has painful experience
of investing in developing solutions to environmental problems
on the basis of there being a demand for those solutions, only
to find weak enforcement means this demand turns out to be more
illusion than reality.
Government must recognise that enforcement of
environmental legislation is not a burden on industry but actually
essential to innovation and the effective running of the market
and, therefore, to the economic as well as environmental health
of the country.
We therefore recommend that the Government uses
some of monies raised from the increase in the Landfill Tax to
support the Environment Agency's work to tackle fly-tipping.
3. Reducing Landfill More Generally
EIC has been closely involved in the work carried
out by the Cabinet Office Strategy Unit and the Defra Waste Implementation
Team to put this into practice. We welcome the measures in the
Defra Waste Implementation Strategy and consider good progress
is being achieved.
However, given the scale of the transformation
in waste management required we believe measures will be needed
in order to meet the targets in the Landfill Directive—and
to tackle the UK's waste production more generally.
Most importantly the Government needs to increase
the Landfill Tax more rapidly. The Government has announced this
will be going up by £3 a tonne in 2005-06 and at least £3
a tonne annually following this to £35 a tonne. This is the
key Government instrument to switch the market away from landfill.
We consider that the rise needs to be steeper than £3 a tonne
in future years in order to deliver on the Government's targets
for reducing landfill.
This would also make the tax a greater driver
for waste minimisation—particularly if a substantial part
of the revenues are used to support waste minimisation initiatives,
for example through the Envirowise programme.
8 October 2004
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