Memorandum submitted by WyeCycle
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
WyeCycle is a community business, carrying out
a wide range of environmental work in the village of Wye, Kent.
Established in 1989, we operate the longest running kerbside collection
of organic material in the UK, alongside dry recyclables, furniture,
WEEE, HHW, biodiesel production, Farmers Markets. Average waste
production in Wye is 250kg/hh/yr, compared to the UK average of
around 1,000kg.
WyeCycle have for many years had an uneasy relationship
with the Environment Agency, with the fundamental issue being
the failure of waste licencing legislation to recognise the existence
of small scale community enterprise. This long running dispute
culminated in WyeCycle recently appearing in court for not having
a waste management licence, and we use this experience as the
basis for our submission to this enquiry.
The attached documents set out the flaws within
the current waste licencing regime as it relates to the community
sector. Our proposed solution, as submitted to Sir John Harman,
is also attached.
We thank the committee, in anticipation of some
swift action to resolve the current problems we describe.
Richard Boden
WyeCycle
Firstly, three facts
1. Of the 20 million households in the UK,
none have their domestic refuse managed in a more environmentally
benign manner than the 1,000 households served by WyeCycle. Domestic
waste levels in Wye have been reduced to an average of 250kg/hh/yr,
against the national average of 1,000kg, and WyeCycle are recognised
as being pioneers in the field of sustainable waste management.
We have created four full time jobs, and provide work experience
and volunteering opportunities for people with mental health and
other problems.
2. In 16 years of operation, WyeCycle have
never caused, or been accused of causing, a single pollution incident.
Let's be quite clear, the charges against WyeCycle are not that
we have polluted the environment but that we have operated without
a waste management licence.
3. Waste licensing legislation, as it relates
to the community sector, is a shambles. This is a fact widely
acknowledged by the Environment Agency (EA) and Government, as
well as the hundreds of community sector projects operating illegally
on a daily basis.
It is this third point upon which WyeCycle wish
to focus by way of mitigation.
Waste licensing legislation is a shambles. The
irrationality of the legislation, combined with the inconsistency
and incompetence of the EA in enforcing it, make it impossible
for community groups to comply.
(A) Examples of the bizarre nature of waste licensing:
4. Under the Waste Management Licensing
(WML) regulations 1994, the following materials can all be handled
without a waste management licence: Old tyres, Oil, Solvents,
Refrigerants and halons, Paper sludge, Poultry Litter.
It is, however, illegal to collect the leftovers
from a jumble sale and sort the clothes for developing countries,
books for recycling, pots and pans for scrap etc, without a licence.
This is not just a hypothetical interpretation of the law; the
EA have told WyeCycle that we cannot do this at our yard without
having a licence.
5. Under the WML regulations, it is illegal
to collect garden waste from your neighbours, compost it, and
give them the compost back without a licence. Enforcement of this
law has varied widely, with some EA regions turning a blind eye,
some enforcing it to the letter, and some saying form a "compost
club" so your neighbours are also members of your project.
Due to widespread acknowledgement of the stupidity
of this law, the national Community Composting Network were told
in a meeting with Steve Lee, then head of waste at the EA, that
the EA would ignore this law. Nevertheless, in some parts of the
country the EA continue to threaten community groups with enforcement
action if they sell or even give away their compost. In the case
of WyeCycle the EA have ignored this law, allowing us to sell
our compost without a licence. How can you comply with the WML
regulations when your local EA operates a "pick'n'mix"
attitude towards the rules? Why do you need a licence to compost
garden waste but not to burn it?—thousands of landscape
gardeners and council parks departments are continually burning
their waste, blithely ignored by the EA.
6. If a householder has, for example, three
items of furniture to get rid of, they have two choices. They
can send a cheque for £10 to Ashford Borough Council who
will then come and collect all three items and dispose of to landfill,
or they can send a cheque for £10 to WyeCycle. If we get
to the household and only two items of furniture are sellable
through our furniture store, the law says we must only take these
two items and leave the third—which the law says is "waste"—behind.
The householder would then need to send a further cheque for £10
to the council to get rid of this item. Clearly, next time they
had furniture to get rid of they would just let the council have
the lot for landfill. WyeCycle therefore take all three items,
and the council come into our yard once a fortnight to take unusable
furniture to landfill. This is by far the best system—for
the householder and for the environment—yet it is illegal
in the absence of a WML.
7. By collecting waste wood in Wye, and
reusing as much as possible before letting the annual Guy Fawkes
bonfire have the clean residual (the mdf, painted etc going to
landfill), WyeCycle handle our communities waste wood in the most
environmentally manner possible. In any other community, an annual
trawl round local houses for bonfire night results in all manner
of dangerous material being burned. Yet we are told we must have
a WML to handle waste wood, while other more dangerous disposal
routes are ignored.
(B) What you have to do to get a licence (which is
rather dependant on how well the EA understand their own rulebook).
8. The EA have for years told WyeCycle we
needed a licence, and that the lowest licensing band was "less
than 5,000t of waste a year". We handle 25-50t of waste a
year. Such a licence would cost WyeCycle around £5,000/yr.
(application fee, staff going on courses, staff being assessed
by EA, changes to operating practices etc). Our total turnover
is around £100,000/yr, of which 30-40k has to be raised through
grant aid, with a constant struggle to pay our staff even the
minimum wage.
9. WyeCycle recently identified a "less
than 500t/yr" licence in the EA's own list of charges; when
we challenged the EA on this they admitted we could operate under
such a licence but they "haven't processed many of them"
ie they hadn't heard of it before. This licence costs £134/yr;
although the staff inspection costs etc still make it prohibitively
expensive. Up until the day we received the summonses, our local
EA officers were bending over backwards to help us apply for this
licence; they obviously knew the regional office were going to
prosecute and were/are acutely embarrassed about the fact they
have failed badly in not identifying this level of licence to
prevent all this happening. (In actual fact this licence only
allows storage of waste not sorting, meaning we couldn't sort
jumble sale leftovers, but the EA either don't understand this
or are prepared to turn a blind eye; either way further evidence
of the shambolic state of the legislation.)
(C) WyeCycle have done everything in their power
to move this issue forward—both for their benefit and the
community waste sector as a whole—yet the EA/DEFRA have
failed to act.
10. WyeCycle have spent years highlighting
the need for reform of the WML regulations as they relate to the
community sector. Over the last two years we have written repeatedly
to, amongst others:
— Sir John Harman, Chair of EA.
— Wil Huntley, Head of charges at EA.
— Dr Andrew Skinner, Director of Environmental
Protection at EA.
— Elliott Morley/Ben Bradshaw/Tony
Blair.
We have copies of all these letters and replies
received, clearly demonstrating both our efforts to become legal
and the abject failure of all the above to understand the issue
never mind act on it. Four years ago WyeCycle were paid by the
EA to go to London and give a room full of EA people a presentation
on the community waste sector and the challenges it faced, yet
still nothing has been done to resolve the issues we highlighted.
(D) The left hand of the EA doesn't know what the
right hand is doing.
11. For years the EA have said they were
concerned about the watercourse in WyeCycle's yard. We have responded
by saying "Tell us what you would like us to do and we will
do it", yet they have always refused to give any advice.
We have recently been told by Kent County Council planning department
that the waste management arm of the EA have said the watercourse
should be capped, but the biodiversity arm are saying that it
shouldn't. How are we supposed to operate when faced with such
shambolic regulation?
(E) The EA show an alarmingly poor grasp of the subject
matter.
12. EA officers have a very poor understanding
of sustainable waste management. To give one example: In a witness
statement by an EA officer, he says "Mr Boden referred to
material in various stages of decomposition as mature, nine-month-old
compost. . . This statement did not make sense to me,
as compost produced at (a different site) I am familiar with is
mature after 16 weeks." For the EA to have such a poor knowledge
of the subject must cast serious doubt on their credentials.
(F) The EA are being totally disproportionate in
their assessment of risk.
13. The EA have spent a large amount of
time and resources putting together a case against WyeCycle, whilst
acknowledging that we do not pollute the environment. Meanwhile:
— Within a one mile radius of WyeCycle's
site there are numerous examples of illegal and polluting waste
disposal; fly tipping and burning. Photos of all of these are
available. The EA drive past and ignore all of these every time
they come to our yard. This is directly relevant to our case for
two reasons; firstly because it demonstrates disproportionate
treatment of WyeCycle, secondly because it needs to be understood
that the existence of groups such as WyeCycle prevents such illegal
waste disposal by providing a local outlet. The flytipped cookers
and bags of garden waste are not from Wye where we provide a comprehensive
service, they are from areas where less facilities exist.
14. Out of the 750,000 households in Kent,
all but the 1,000 served by WyeCycle send their kitchen waste
to landfill. How often do the EA prosecute landfill sites for
seagulls carrying food off and dropping it in neighbouring fields
and gardens to spread disease? or for having waste stored outdoors?
or for smelling? or for being near watercourses? Kent sends domestic
waste to a 200 acre landfill site at Rainham, the nearest thing
to hell on earth you will find in the UK, literally on the banks
of the Thames. Do the EA consider this to be a threat to human
health or the environment?
15. WyeCycle wish to use this case as an
opportunity to call on the Environment Agency to spend less time
trying to enforce poor legislation and more time getting the legislation
amended to reflect the scale of the community sector. In that
way, we could all work together to achieve our common aim of a
cleaner environment.
(G) Waste Management Licensing regulations.
16. As you are aware, I have written on
several occasions to you and your colleagues urging a review of
waste licensing legislation as it applies to small community groups.
Nothing has happened, with the result that on 1 November WyeCycle
appeared in court for not having a waste management licence. I
enclose details of the case, and would urge you to spend some
time reading through this to get a further understanding of the
shortfalls in the current regulations.
17. Can I urge you, once again, to take
some action on this issue. Leaving things as they are is not an
option; to do so would commit the community sector and the Environment
agency to spending all their time in court arguing over this issue
while the polluters are left to carry on polluting. To summarise
the situation:
18(i) Under the current regulations, if
you handle one tonne of waste a year you have to comply with the
same licensing requirements and fees as someone handling 5,000
tonnes of waste a year.
(ii) This makes it impossible for small-scale
community groups to carry out local, community based action on
waste reduction, as well as making it impossible for the Environment
Agency to consistently enforce the law.
(iii) The solution is for a deminimus/ exemption
to be introduced for anyone handling minute quantities of waste,
followed by a couple of new charging bands with lower fees and
lower levels of paperwork than the current "0-5,000t/yr".
(iv) We would suggest:
To handle/treat the following tpa of waste,
the following shall apply:
| 0-10 | Exempt (no paperwork)
| £0 |
| 11-100 | Licence (minimal paperwork; who, what, where etc).
| £100 |
| 101-500 | Licence (more info required, similar to existing requirements but less complex)
| £500 |
| 501-5,000 | Licensed, as per current regulatory requirements and charges for 0-5,000 tpa.
| |
| | |
19. Thank you in anticipation of some swift progress
on this issue. I would suggest that the above could be introduced
under the Agencies existing powers to vary licensing requirements,
demonstrated through the regular issuing of guidance on low risk
waste activities. I note that the Environment, Food and Rural
Affairs Committee have just announced an enquiry into the work
of the Environment Agency, and shall be submitting our thoughts
and comments to this.
WyeCycle
November 2005
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