Annex: Waste Framework, Packaging and Packaging
Waste and Landfill Directives
WASTE FRAMEWORK DIRECTIVE
Municipal Waste
Member States can currently select from four definitions,
with the UK using "waste from households". However,
in order to create a level playing field and ensure comparable
reporting, the proposal recommends a single definition to be used
by all Member States by 2020, which would include waste from retail
trade, small businesses, office buildings and institutions (such
as schools, hospitals and government buildings) where it is similar
in nature and composition to household waste.
This would require the collection of new statistical
data from the commercial and industrial sector, and may affect
the achievability of the existing 2020 target by changing the
baseline for measurement, and pose additional costs as a number
of retail trade, small businesses, office buildings and institutions
will have their waste collected privately. It will be necessary
to better understand how much additional waste would be captured
by this definition, and how this impacts current performance towards
recycling targets.
Food Waste
The proposal defines food waste as food lost from
the food supply chain (other than that diverted to material uses
such as bio-based products, animal feed, or sent for redistribution).
The UK currently excludes agricultural food losses from its definition
of food waste, and the impact of this broadening of the scope
will need to be further considered, notably in relation to setting
aspirational food waste reduction targets in national waste prevention
plans. However, although this is not explicit in the current draft,
the Commission says that, due to lack of data across Member States,
the EU target and the associated reporting would be limited to
post farm-gate waste, which aligns with the UK approach. The UK
will therefore continue to press for more clarity to avoid any
new burdens which a broader EU definition would entail.
Construction &
Demolition Waste
No changes are proposed for the target for recycling
of waste from the construction and demolition industry, but the
proposal recommends that backfilling (where inert
construction waste is used to fill excavated areas) should be
reported separately. Also, the new definition of backfilling appears
to include all waste used in construction, and could capture
waste-derived products all of which, as products, should count
towards a recycling target. This potentially causes impacts for
achieving the targets set out in both the Directive and the Packaging
and Packaging Waste Directive.
Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR)
The proposal requires Member States to take appropriate
measures to encourage the design of products in order to reduce
their environmental impact as well as the development of multiple
use products, provided this avoids distortions of the internal
market. Although the UK is already taking measures to stimulate
action on electrical and electronic products, the wider impacts
of this proposal are unclear, and UK producers and manufacturers
may need to bear additional costs.
The proposal allows Member States discretion in the
application of EPR, but, if they choose to apply that discretion,
it requires them to comply with a set of minimum requirements
set out in Annex VII, which include defining measurable targets
for prevention, preparing for re-use, recycling and/or recovery
with a view to meeting or exceeding existing quantitative EU waste
targets; procedures for gathering data on products placed on the
market and their eventual collection and treatment; and ensuring
that financial contributions by producers to EPR schemes cover
the whole cost of waste management, as well as measures to tackle
litter. Also, it is not clear if Annex VII is intended to apply
across other Directives, and it will be necessary to clarify the
full extent and limitations intended.
Waste Prevention
The proposal requires Member States to take appropriate
measures, and introduces an aspirational (non-binding)
Food Waste Reduction Target of 30% between 2017 and 2025. The
UK supports this voluntary approach, but has already made significant
steps in reducing food waste, and risks being put at a serious
disadvantage if the baseline for the target is set for 2017. It
will therefore be important to press for maximum flexibility,
either by removing the baseline year, or by enabling Member States
to set the baseline in such a way as to take into consideration
early action on food waste.
The proposal sets a target of 70% of municipal waste
to be recycled by 2030. It is not known how costly it would
be to reach this target, or if 70% represents a feasible rate
of recycling given the other definitional changes. This target
needs to be considered in light of the proposal on tighter landfill
restrictions and the issues associated with this. Achieving this
target is likely to require significant changes in design and
business models to increase the recyclability of common materials
and products, all of which could reduce costs to business
over the long term.
Recycling
The proposal clarifies that recycling reported
against the target should not include material rejected from the
recycling process. It is estimated that in the UK rejects range
from 7-10%, which could have a significant impact on achieving
recycling targets.
Early Warning System
The proposal seeks to identify under-performing Member
States, and to require them to submit to the Commission additional
measures to meet the targets. Whilst such a system may
benefit some Member States, it poses additional reporting burdens,
and the Commission's recommended actions for struggling Member
States could pose subsidiarity issues.
Hazardous waste
The proposal would track this from source to destination
based on an electronic reporting system. Those systems which exist
in the UK would need to be reviewed and revised to ensure they
are fit for purpose.
Separate collection of biowaste
This would include park and garden waste, food and
kitchen waste from households, restaurants, caterers and retail
premises, and comparable waste from food processing plants. A
mandatory action to collect food waste from households could be
significant, and would be likely to pose new costs to Local Authorities
where the plans are not already in place to increase householder
participation. The proposal can only be fully assessed once it
is clear whether Local Authorities can bypass this requirement
if it does not prove technically and economically practicable.
Extending this requirement to commercial premises may also introduce
new costs for businesses, except in Scotland where it would be
in line with existing legislation.
Permit for collection, transport and disposal
or recovery of waste
The proposal would extend the range of establishments
or undertakings which Member States would be able to exempt from
the requirement to have such a permit, and, whilst this reduction
in the burdens on business is welcome, it will be necessary to
ensure that the exemption does not impact on the ability to regulate
facilities properly.
Exemption for small businesses
Whilst the proposal allowing Member States to exempt
small businesses collecting or transporting small quantities of
non-hazardous waste from the need to be registered with regulatory
authorities is welcome, it will be important that exemptions are
strictly limited to SME's carrying their own waste (like
gardeners and shop-keepers), rather than professional waste operatives,
who should be subject to regulatory controls protecting human
health and the environment.
Record Keeping
The proposal extends requirements, which previously
applied to hazardous waste facilities (including the requirement
to keep chronological records), to producers of all wastes, and
also introduces annual mandatory electronic reporting. Neither
change is unlikely to pose a significant burden on the UK, although
this will need to be discussed with industry stakeholders.
Enforcement and Penalties
The proposal contains a requirement to inhibit
illegal waste dumping, and, as littering is already a criminal
offence in the UK, this would be unlikely to require any extra
action.
Data reporting requirements
These would be altered requiring the UK to
report annually instead of every three years, but in a shorter
format. However, it also introduces a requirement for third party
verification which would impose an additional burden on Government.
Delegation of powers for implementing and delegated
acts
The proposals empower the Commission to adopt delegated
and implementing acts for a range of activities to supplement
the proposed Directive, thus implementing amendments to the Lisbon
Treaty. In the main, the powers proposed appear to be appropriate,
but, where technical changes that may impact on the UK waste management
industry, appropriate Member State involvement should be ensured
through Technical Committees.
PACKAGING AND PACKAGING WASTE DIRECTIVE
Definitions
It is proposed that various of these should be
aligned with those in the Waste Framework Directive, but the
definition of 'packaging waste' may lead to changing the baseline
and increasing targets by proxy, as producers can at present discount
production residues when calculating the amount of packaging placed
on the market (and therefore their recycling obligation). However,
it is not possible to quantify the impact of this change, which
will vary according to material (and which will also makes it
cheaper for producers to import packaging, rather than manufacture
in the UK, with economic consequences for the supply chain and
producers, and UK employment).
Recycling targets
The proposal would set new (and generally higher)
recycling targets for 2020, 2025 and 2030 for total packaging
and for specific materials, and would for the first time specify
a calculation method for reporting recycling against the targets.
As a lone amendment, the UK could meet some of the
proposed new targets, but others would be harder to achieve, would
pose a significant net cost to industry, and could require recycling
items for which the technology is not currently available. Together
with other amendments aligning definitions, specifying a new calculation
method, and redefining the target to remove the existing recovery
component, this would effectively lower the current baseline recycling
rate, and automatically increase the requirement, meaning that
many of the existing targets could become unreachable for the
UK, even before the proposed increases to these are considered.
In addition, the move from a recycling and recovery target to
one based on recycling and preparing for reuse target is arbitrary
and not supported by evidence.
A better understanding will be required of the baseline
which is being set by amendments to the other articles on definitions
and target calculation to inform a negotiating mandate. Further
analysis is underway to examine what economically optimal recycling
rates for different materials could be, although this will depend
on impacts to the baseline.
National packaging design requirements
The proposal allows Member States to introduce such
requirements, and requires them to take measures to encourage
the design of packaging to reduce its environmental impact and
the generation of waste in the course of the production and subsequent
use. Although it stipulates that these measures must avoid distorting
the internal market, this provision nevertheless risks undermining
the aim of harmonising packaging rules, and seriously jeopardising
the internal market for packaged goods as it appears to encourage
national packaging design requirements, national re-use targets
and national prevention targets. This would require all producers
of packaged goods in the EU to change their packaging for each
market, and would appear to create vast and unnecessary additional
costs to the packaging supply chain across Europe. It will therefore
be necessary to seek further clarification of what this change
is trying to achieve is needed.
Article 21 Committee
Article 21 of the Directive provides for a Committee
of Member States to deliver opinions on draft technical adaptations
proposed by the Commission, and its proposed abolition would a
serious backwards step.
LANDFILL DIRECTIVE
Targets
The proposal introduces two new targets, which incrementally
decrease the quantities of biodegradable municipal waste being
landfilled. The existing targets were initially introduced to
reduce the quantity of greenhouse gases from landfill, and a move
away from them is welcome as they result in a narrow focus on
biodegradable waste entering landfill, rather than enabling Member
States to take a wider overview on diverting waste from landfill
and pushing it up the waste hierarchy.
2025
Moving to the level of diversion from landfill proposed
for 2025 is not technically unachievable, but will be challenging
for the UK. A better understanding of the volumes and proportion
of recyclable materials going to landfill will be necessary, and
Defra is currently undertaking the necessary research. However,
economic analysis suggests that landfill restrictions come at
a net cost, mainly due to the costs of separate collection, so
good evidence is required to respond to this proposal. In particular,
there is evidence that plastics are better in landfill than in
incineration, so it would be necessary to ensure that any future
regulatory framework directed plastics from landfill to recycling
rather than recovery.
2030
Implementing the proposal to restrict landfilling
to only residual waste by 2030, so that waste sent to landfill
does not exceed 5% of total municipal waste would be very challenging
for the UK Government. A better overall understanding will be
needed of the costs and benefits of the proposed targets, including
of the types of policy interventions which may be needed. There
may also be issues associated with the practicalities of implementing
and enforcing landfill restrictions.
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