European Communities - Seventeenth Report

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Here you can browse the report which was ordered by the House of Lords to be printed 17 March 1998.

CONTENTS

	Paragraph
PART 1 INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND	1
What is Landfill?	1
Sustainable Development and the Waste Hierarchy	4
Environmental impacts of waste management	7
The Enquiry and the Report	10
PART 2 LANDFILL AND EUROPEAN WASTE MANAGEMENT POLICY	13
The Waste Management Hierarchy	13
European Union Waste Management Policy	14
The Waste Framework Directive	14
The Community strategy for waste management	16
Development of UK policy to meet Community requirements	17
Legislation and the 1997 White Paper	17
Best Practicable Environmental Option	18
The draft Landfill Directive	20
A second attempt at Community legislation	20
Purpose and overall objectives of the Landfill Directive	21
Scope of the Directive	25
New features of the 1997 draft Directive	26
Current state of progress in the Council and the European Parliament	28
PART 3 ANALYSIS OF THE PROPOSALS	30
Definitions	30
Municipal waste	31
Biodegradable waste	33
The potentially harmful effects of landfill	35
Surface and groundwater pollution	36
Soil contamination	43
Air pollution	46
General Implications of the Landfill Directive	56
Effect on landfill practice in the United Kingdom	56
Subsidiarity and Proportionality	60
Classes of landfill for different types of waste	68
Hazardous waste	70
Liquid waste	75
Used vehicle tyres	79
Pre-treatment	80
Co-disposal	83
Reduction of biodegradable waste going to landfill	92
The reduction targets	93
Restoring the balance of costs of landfill compared with other options	102
Existing landfill sites	107
Administrative procedures	108
Permits; waste acceptance; control; monitoring and closure of landfill sites	108
Reporting requirements	109
Committee and committee procedures	110
PART 4 THE BROADER IMPLICATIONS OF THE LANDFILL DIRECTIVE	111
Sustainability and the Waste Hierarchy	111
Compliance costs	117
Economics of landfill and other waste management options	121
Life Cycle Analysis and Cost Benefit Analysis	121
Economic instruments	124
Recycling and Energy Recovery	127
Recycling	128
Composting	135
Incineration and energy recovery	140
Some concluding thoughts	147
The scientific basis for policy	147
Sustainable waste management is of concern to us all	148
PART 5 SUMMARY OF CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS	151
Summary	151
Monitoring Member States' progress towards the targets
Recommendation to the House	152

Appendix 1-Membership of Sub-Committee C

Appendix 2-List of Witnesses

Appendix 3-Explanatory Memorandum by the Department of the Environment,  Transport and the Regions on the Proposal for a Council Directive on the landfill of waste

Appendix 4-Glossary of acronyms and technical terms

NOTE: Pages of the report are numbered in bold type; pages of evidence are numbered in ordinary type. References in the text of the report are as follows:

 (Q) refers to a question in oral evidence;

 (p) with a bold number refers to page of the report and with an ordinary number to a page of evidence

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