The Agency believes the fridge mountain of 2001-02 “will seem as nothing” compared to the problems Britain now faces as new European regulations mean only 10 landfills in England and Wales will be able to take in hazardous waste next year.
Speaking at the Welsh Assembly Government’s Planning for Hazardous Waste Seminar last week, the Agency's North Wales area manager, Steve Moore, said: “Recent research undertaken by the Agency identified a requirement for at least two million tonnes of additional treatment capacity in England and Wales to cope with both the loss of landfill capacity and the need to treat wastes prior to disposal. There is not much hope of this being in place by July 2004.
“We can all look back to the fridges fiasco of last year, and wince a little. But that will seem as nothing compared to the challenge that hazardous waste presents us with,” Mr Moore added.
The Agency warning came as the waste industry accused the government of “dithering” over the issue of hazardous waste last week (see letsrecycle.com story).
The problem of where the hazardous waste will go is set to be compounded by new European standards, which mean more waste materials are to be considered hazardous. The adoption of the Hazardous Waste Directive will mean that items including televisions, computer monitors, fluorescent lights and batteries will be labelled hazardous, where previously they were not.
“This will result in a significant increase in the amount of waste that we will have to manage as hazardous waste,” Mr Moore said. “We are also concerned that producers faced with the lack of treatment and disposal outlets and rapidly rising costs will store wastes at their production sites under inappropriate conditions without the appropriate health and environmental protection measures.”
Pollution
The Environment Agency is anticipating an increase in the number of pollution incidents arising from the inappropriate storage of waste, and also in the long-distance transport that will be needed as hazardous waste landfills in the UK are shut down next year.
The Agency is particularly concerned that the hazardous waste disposal issues are not being communicated to small and medium-sized businesses. The impact of increasing disposal prices could have a crippling effect on SMEs, the Agency said.
“Time is short and the challenge to find and provide adequate facilities for dealing with hazardous waste is, to be brutal, immense. Above all we should not lose sight of the message that waste is every one’s problem and every one needs to be part of the solution,” Mr Moore said.
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