That was the message from recycling Minister Lord Taylor who was speaking at a conference on illegal waste shipments in Liverpool yesterday (May 30).
“Working through the supply chain, we will consider other tools to improve quality”
Lord Taylor
The event was entitled Improving the Quality of Recyclates and Resource Efficiency and was hosted by the European Union network for the Implementation of Environmental Law (IMPEL).
Lord Taylor said that much of the focus by European governments to date had been on increasing the amount of recycling. But, he said it was also important to look at the quality of recycling.
Lord Taylor said the environmental and economic impacts of exporting poor quality wastes could be highly significant for developing nations, with potential impacts on human health. And, he said this could be avoided if local authorities and the waste industry helped to ensure that waste is properly sorted and is of a sufficient quality to go directly to a reprocessor.
Code
In the UK,the government was committed to working with stakeholders to improve the quality of recyclates, said LordTaylor,with the code of practice for Materials Recovery Facilities (MRFs) forming an important part of that work.
He said: An important element of Government policy to support this work is our proposed Code of Practice for Materials Recovery Facilities.
Government officials are working closely with industry and trade associations to finalise a statutory Code of Practice for waste management sites involved in the sorting of municipal, commercial and industrial waste.
Lord Taylor said the code would be an excellent example of working with the supply chain to achieve real improvements in the outputs from waste facilities.
Hampshire
At one Materials Recovery Facility in Alton in Hampshire, Lord Taylor explained that information on the quality of recyclates is shared with each of the 14 local authorities that supply the facility with waste, with the feedback used to improve waste collections.
Through this work local authorities begin to understand the value and quality of what and how much they are recycling and that drives greater quality, he said.
I believe that the proposed MRF code of practice can set the UK well on the way to a new focus on quality recyclates which will contribute to a reduction in poor quality illegal exports.
Other tools
In order to achieve a step change in quality Lord Taylor said the government was also considering introducing further measures, such as stronger enforcement of the Waste Shipment Regulations, which contain specific controls on the export of waste.
He said: Working through the supply chain, we will consider other tools to improve quality, this may include developing a supply chain approach to grading materials by quality and contamination thresholds.
We will also explore the potential for enhancing enforcement of the Waste Shipment Regulations using information on the quality and destination of outputs from waste management facilities delivered by the Code of Practice.”
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