PART 5 SUMMARY OF CONCLUSIONS
AND RECOMMENDATIONS (continued)
Monitoring Member States' progress
towards the targets
xxix We consider that progress
towards the biodegradable waste reduction targets should be measured
against national statistics of waste arisings and disposals: this
would be consistent with the United Kingdom's commitments to national
targets for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Nevertheless,
in the interests of subsidiarity and pursuit of the Best Practicable
Environmental Option in particular circumstances Member States
should be free to determine the rate at which disposals of biodegradable
waste are phased out at individual landfill sites. (101)
Insurance for landfill operators'
contingent liabilities
xxx The environmental problems
caused by inadequately controlled hazardous waste sites were one
of the early driving forces behind UK hazardous waste legislation.
The insurance industry has had some spectacularly bad experiences
with environmental impairment liability cases. Realistically it
has to be accepted that beyond a certain point risks become uninsurable
and that it will fall to the State ultimately to shoulder the
burden. This is, however, an example of lack of sustainability.
(106)
Closure of non-conforming sites
xxxi We agree with the European
Parliament that the provisions of Article 14 need strengthening
by requiring that any sites not granted a permit under the Waste
Framework Directive should be closed down. (107)
Reporting and Monitoring
xxxii We endorse the need for
closer involvement of the European Parliament in the reporting
and monitoring process: this is in line with the recommendations
of our Report Community Environmental Law: Making it Work.
We would urge the Commission to make the best possible use
of the European Environment Agency's expertise in developing common
standards for monitoring of waste management practices in the
Member States. (109)
Comitology
xxxiii We wish to reiterate
the comments we made on "comitology" in the Community
Environmental Law Report and recommend that the proceedings
of the Article 16 Committee should be conducted with full
transparency, so that its advice can be seen to be based on objective
science as opposed to vested interests. (110)
The waste management hierarchy
and Best Practicable Environmental Option
xxxiv Although the Commission
has argued that because the waste hierarchy was political in origin
it cannot, in effect, be questioned, we find this difficult to
accept. The hierarchy is a guiding framework, not a straitjacket.
Landfill has an inevitable, key role in waste disposal strategies:
it should not by implication be stigmatised by its position at
the bottom of the hierarchy. (112)
xxxv As a general principle,
we do not support the choosing of options which are "higher"
in the hierarchy than landfill if their environmental impact is
less favourable. Equally, if the environmental impacts are equivalent,
we would not support an option which is economically less favourable
than landfill, after such factors as transport, distance and market
demand have been taken into account. In either case this could
be an argument against recycling schemes which intuitively might
seem more attractive than landfill. (113)
xxxvi We agree with the arguments
in the previous Government's White Paper, Making Waste Work,
that universal adherence to the hierarchy in all circumstances
may not therefore accord with the principle of Best Practicable
Environmental Option, but it should be recognised that BPEO has
yet to be rigorously defined in the context of waste management.
(114)
Sustainability
xxxvii In our view, the Directive
does not explicitly advance the cause of sustainability. Useful
though the "hierarchy" may be as a concept, it is perhaps
better to see it less as a chain (or ladder) and more as a matrix
of opportunities and options, together forming an integrated strategy
in which BPEO will guide policies in specific circumstances-for
example, reflecting the widely differing conditions of scattered
rural communities and large conurbations. This has been well put
by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency: "At its very
simplest, sustainable development can be construed as attempting
to move away from a linear-based system of resource utilisation-process-waste
generation to a more closed-loop approach maximising the efficient
use of resources and minimising waste". We should like to
see this matrix approach better reflected in the Directive or
at least in its national transposition. (115)
Previous conclusions of the
Committee
xxxviii It is perhaps not surprising
that our view on the waste management hierarchy does not significantly
differ from that expressed in our 1993 Report on Packaging
and Packaging Waste. (116)
Compliance costs
xxxix The Government is right
to be concerned about the magnitude of the range of possible costs
in relation to the proposals of Article 5. We therefore reiterate
the point which we have made earlier (xxvi) about the need for
a more realistic timetable, particularly bearing in mind the UK
industry's considerable investment in efficient landfill facilities
which still have many years of economic life left.
The landfill tax
xl The landfill tax is a highly
appropriate form of economic instrument to underpin the process
of reducing dependency on landfill. We therefore support the European
Parliament's proposal for a new Article which would require the
Commission to bring forward proposals for the use of economic
instruments by the Community, or (failing that) to encourage Member
States to adopt measures themselves to promote the objectives
of the Landfill Directive. (126)
Economics of recycling and BPEO
xli Economic incentives or
simple regulation are needed to get recycling markets going:
in the UK especially more commitment and effort for recycling
is required through the use of regulation, eg by requiring
newsprint to contain a minimum percentage of recycled material.
(132)
xlii The logistics of recycling
are critical to its viability: for instance, it is inefficient
for separation of paper and cardboard to be done at transfer stations
and recycling facilities-it should be done at the point of collection.
(132)
xliii Recycling can make demands
upon the environment, for instance in the form of transport costs,
energy consumption, air pollution and noise: it is therefore not
necessarily the BPEO in sparsely populated areas. (132)
xliv Rigorous life-cycle analysis
is the key to finding the BPEO for dealing with particular waste
streams, including minimisation or recycling. (132)
Recycling as a major policy
objective
xlv Although adherence to the
waste management hierarchy needs to be checked case by case against
the principle of BPEO, we fully support the importance which the
Commission attaches to recycling as a component of sustainable
waste management. We believe the United Kingdom Government needs
to be more positive with initiatives in this area of environmental
policy. We welcome the new guidance to local authorities from
the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions as
a useful first step. (133)
xlvi We think it would be useful
if the Government, when responding to this Report, were to give
an account of progress on matters which were the subject of recommendations
in our 1993 Report on Packaging and to set out its views on the
wider policy issues raised in the Report, most of which we feel
remain valid. (134)
Composting
xlvii We agree in principle
with the new recital on composting proposed by the European Parliament.
We consider that where conditions for collection and processing
are appropriate, municipal composting operations should be encouraged.
We look forward to the Commission's proposals for encouraging
composting in the Community. (138)
xlviii Although the market
for compost derived from municipal waste may be limited, and needs
to be demand-led to be successful, its potential should be compared
with the large established market for peat-the commercial exploitation
of which causes undisputed environmental damage to certain areas
of the British Isles of high nature conservation value. To all
intents and purposes peat is a non-renewable resource. We believe
that better quality control, in combination with public support
for the green agenda, will help to overcome current consumer resistance.
We welcome the fact that the Department of the Environment, Transport
and the Regions has recently issued technical guidance on specifications
for municipal compost. (139)
Incineration and energy recovery
xlix Whilst recognising the
pressures of public opinion which make it so difficult for incineration
plants to obtain planning permission, we recommend that, as a
general principle, anything that can safely be burnt should be,
and that wherever possible it should be combined with energy production.
Only the difficult residues from incineration should go to landfill:
for relatively harmless residues, such as bottom ashes from incinerators,
uses should be found, eg as road surface material.
(144)
l Incineration must be seen
as a longterm option, not a quick and cheap one: it would
be unfortunate if implementation of the Directive created pressure
for investment in small local incinerators to inferior specifications
and levels of performance. We would therefore share the Government's
concern if there were a real risk of a "dash to incineration".
The costs of collection and transport and economies of scale would
suggest that incineration is best suited to larger centres of
population, leaving landfill as a better option in rural communities.
State of the art performance depends on substantial capital investment,
and it is essential to incinerators' viability that they have
a steady and minimum assured throughput, and a guaranteed operational
lifetime. (145)
li All incineration of waste
should be carried out using best available technology, the licensing
authorities having been satisfied that the processes involved
pose no threats to health or the environment. Like any system
of waste management-but perhaps particularly so, because of the
need to provide assurance to the public-incinerators require constant
and attentive monitoring and maintenance to ensure that a wide
variety of waste is subjected to the correct temperatures and
incineration times necessary for its safe destruction. (146)
The scientific basis for policy
lii We found the DETR and the
Environment Agency less than convincing in their responses to
our questions about the scientific basis of the waste hierarchy.
While we accept the constraints within which the UK Presidency
is working, we find it unsatisfactory that political expediency
in this instance weighs more heavily than the wealth of practical
experience of landfill in the UK, even allowing for a less than
perfect scientific understanding of the processes within landfill
sites. We have frequently expressed concern in past Reports about
the quality of the science on which the European Community bases
its environmental policy. (147)
In conclusion
liii Landfill will continue
to play an essential part in the portfolio of waste disposal practices
which-in the right combination and developed over the right timescale-must
feature in sustainable waste management policy. But it must be
accepted that in the relatively small islands which make up the
United Kingdom, both the population pressures in the centres of
economic activity and the need to protect an irreplaceable natural
heritage present a powerful challenge to landfill in the long
run. Both landfill and land-raising are landhungry: sites
which are acceptable to their neighbours are increasingly difficult
to find. There may be no immediate threat to the supply of traditional
holes in the ground; and where they rest on substantial clay deposits
they will continue to be the BPEO for a substantial proportion
of total waste disposals. But it should be recognised that their
continued availability depends, in part, on unsustainable practices
in the construction industry. The construction industry cannot
take it for granted that raw materials can be quarried and extracted
from the environment on demand without regard to the alternative
of using recycled construction wastes as aggregate and hardcore.
(148)
liv Waste reduction is not
just an option: it is an imperative. We need to create, through
education and example, a new social spirit in which Government,
industry and citizens positively want to see waste reduced at
all stages. In encouraging the Government to be more active in
promoting waste prevention and recycling and in creating the right
market conditions for them, we recognise that decisions sometimes
have to be made for reasons other than those of economics: there
can be other perceived benefits in the form of public education,
enhanced amenity, employment opportunities and so on. (148)
lv We commend these thoughts
to the Government and look forward to seeing some reflection of
them in the national waste management strategy. (150)
RECOMMENDATION
TO THE
HOUSE
152. The Committee considers
that the proposed Directive on Landfill of Waste raises important
questions to which the attention of the House should be drawn,
and makes this Report to the House for debate.
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