EA to conduct agricultural trials on use of MBT outputs
Previously the use of CLOs on crop-growing land has been prevented due to potential contamination and the Agency said it would not change its ‘precautionary principle' but, under the trial, it would grant bespoke waste management licences to participating sites. CLO currently has a narrow avenue of uses – such as landfill, biofuel crop growing and land restoration – and the purpose of the trials is to understand what other uses are available to the material stream. The Agency is running a consultation until January 22 2010 on what should be the technical measures and standards for large-scale trials of the material.
A statement accompanying the consultation said: “In many cases we do not know enough about the effects of these CLOs to be confident of the actual nature and level of the risks. As a regulator we therefore have to proceed with caution, adopting what is commonly referred to as the ‘precautionary principle'. This means that we do not consider that CLOs should be used on land that is, or could be, used for agriculture.”
Environment minister visits South-East metal recycling firms
Accompanied by BMRA director general Ian Hetherington, Mr Norris visited a site in Essex to see how non-ferrous metals and catalytic convertors are collected and processed. Afterwards, Mr Norris headed to a metal recycling firm in Kent to learn about shredding and large-scale metal processing, including end-of-life vehicles and export shipping. In the past months, BMRA representatives and the minister have held talks about a number of issues affecting metals recyclers including the Waste Framework Directive, Defra's planned revisions to environmental permitting and the need for proportionate and risk-based regulation backed by consistent enforcement across the UK.
Commenting on the tour, Mr Norris said: “These visits show the UK has a strong metal recycling industry that makes a major contribution to UK waste recovery and exports and is saving world energy demands – helping to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”
Procurement rule change could lead to increased contract delays
Local authorities could face an increase in the number of legal challenges and delays in procuring contracts under new EU directives, a leading London law firm has warned.
Neil Harrison, an associate at Dickinson Dees, said the situation will come to light under the EU Remedies Directive set to come into effect on December 20 2009. Under the Directive, a claim launched by failed bidders in public procurement procedures will automatically block an authority from entering a contract pending the outcome of court proceedings. The new law also will require a more detailed debrief information to be provided to participants in the procurement process prior to entering into the contract.
Mr Harrison said: “Whilst it is too early to determine whether the new regulations will open the 'floodgates' for lawsuits, I believe we are going to see a greater number of potential claims. These are highly lucrative contracts for bidders – in some cases worth millions of pounds. Under the new law, there are now more incentives for aggrieved parties to start legal proceedings.”
School scoops £1,000 prize in plastics debate challenge
Schools from across Greater London were charged with debating the role of plastics, climate change and the environment in the London Assembly Member's actual debating chamber last month(November 27). The discussions were overseen by the Mayoral appointment to the London Waste and Recycling Board, Peter Jones, and presided over by John Sopel from the BBC's Politics Show. The pupils were supported in their public speaking by contributions from scientific author Dr Mark Everard and Peter Davis, director general of the British Plastics Federation. The Plastics 2020 Challenge is a Europe-wide initiative to raise awareness of plastics recycling and double the amount of plastic packaging recycled by 2020 (see letsrecycle.com story).
Jan-Erik Johansson from the Plastics 2020 Challenge and one of the judges, said: “We are grateful to the Greater London Assembly making the chamber available for the day to add so much realism to the debate. The plastics industry has run these debates across Europe and we are delighted to bring the debate to London and to have one of the Mayor's advisers judge the winning team.”
WRAP Northern Ireland holds first annual conference
WRAP Northern Ireland has held a debate between business leaders, politicians and environmental experts on the role of the country in combating climate change, as part of its first annual conference.
The event at the Hilton Hotel in Templepatrick featured a Question Time-style debate, chaired by BBC Northern Ireland's Jim Fitzpatrick and featuring Dr Liz Goodwin, chief executive of WRAP, and Denis McMahon, director of waste infrastructure for the Department of Environment policy and environmental protection group. The panel took questions from delegates and it was said that the Northern Irish government would need to bring together examples of good practice into a coherent package to help tackle climate change.
Speaking after the event, the country's environment secretary Edwin Poots said: “The Northern Ireland Waste Management Strategy recognised that a major obstacle to increasing levels of recycling and resource recovery in Northern Ireland is the lack of local markets for recovered materials, compost and products containing recycled material.”
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