MEPs "made a mess" of their first vote on whether to reclassify the most efficient incinerators as recovery plants, rather than disposal facilities within European law.

That was the opinion of Dr Caroline Jackson, the MEP leading the EU Parliament's negotiations of the successor to the 1975 Waste Framework Directive, addressing the European waste industry on Friday.

MEPs made a mess of the vote in the first reading by accepting too early on the deletion of the formula.

 
Dr Caroline Jackson

Dr Jackson said via recorded video message to the FEAD annual conference in Athens that she was hopeful that her fellow MEPs would support an efficiency formula to determine which incinerators could be termed "recovery" plants.

The MEP for South West England believes classifying the best incinerators as "recovery" plants would lead to a greater public acceptance, helping countries like the UK steer away from landfill.

But speaking to FEAD, the European federation of waste management and environmental services, Dr Jackson said it was "very difficult to predict" how MEPs would accept a set of efficiency criteria to reclassify incinerators. The criteria was put back into the draft waste framework directive by the EU Council, after being rejected by the EU Parliament in February this year (see letsrecycle.com story).

"I'm not sure what my expectations are," Dr Jackson said. "My hope is that the European Parliament will accept the idea of the formula and will essentially accept most of the Council's text on waste-to-energy. I think that is a sensible solution and I think, to be perfectly honest, that MEPs made a mess of the vote in the first reading by accepting too early on the deletion of the formula."

Within the proposal for efficiency criteria for incinerators, a new clause related to Member States' climates has been suggested for inclusion.

This relates to the fact that one key way to make incinerators more efficient is to use the heat generated in the process to heat neighbouring buildings, but in hotter countries in Southern Europe there is little or no market for this excess heat. Countries like Spain and Italy would therefore find it more difficult to develop the most efficient, combined heat and power incinerators.

Dr Jackson explained: "In many parts of the southern Member States there was a threat that the existing plants were not going to be seen as recovery operations under the formula - therefore, you have this strange climactic condition point. Some MEPs will support it, but those from the southern Member States need to be stirred up to support it."

Shipment

One fear about the reclassification of incinerators - particularly on the part of Denmark - is that it will mean countries can get round the EU-wide ban on exporting material for disposal under the Transfrontier Shipment of Waste regulations.

In Denmark's case, it is worried that it could be deluged by waste from Germany, where landfilling of waste that has not been put through a recovery plant is banned.

The proposal on the table is that Member States would be able to refuse entry to waste destined for their domestic incinerators, where the treatment of that foreign waste would mean domestic waste being treated lower down the waste hierarchy by being dumped in a landfill.

Petros Varelidis, environmental attaché of the permanent representation of Greece to the European Union, told FEAD that this was becoming a sticking point for some members of the Council, as it works on a common position with MEPs expected to be adopted this December.

"If you want Danish support for the energy efficiency formula, you are going to have to put up with this, to be blunt," Dr Jackson said, adding: "I am quite relaxed about it, I don't think any Member States want to evoke it and I would hope that FEAD can be relaxed about it as well."

Johannes Blokland, the Dutch MEP leading work on Europe's Thematic Strategy on Waste Prevention and Recycling, was also of the opinion that there was a problem fitting the reclassification of incinerators with the Transfrontier Shipment of Waste regulations.

Mr Blokland told the FEAD meeting that he had another concern - that redefining incinerators as "recovery" plants meant "the Packaging Directive can be met by the incineration of packaging waste. This waste was not meant for that form of disposal."

The European Commission, which originally proposed efficiency formula for reclassifying incinerators (see letsrecycle.com story), revealed its concerns that if not implemented properly, such a measure could encourage "sham recovery". It believes a commitology process - where a panel of appointed experts, rather than politicians, decides on a legal issue - should help determine when incinerators are not up to scratch.

Karolina Fras of the DG Environment at the Commission said: "If a facility is underperforming it would be possible - under commitology - to declare it a disposal facility."