Environment Agency grilled over Brazil exports case

Presenting oral evidence yesterday (November 5) to the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee's inquiry into the waste strategy, which was re-opened to examine the issue, the regulator insisted that such cases were “infrequent” and that the quality of material was improving.

In particular, Agency officials said that it had worked with the Environmental Services Association to increase quality at sorting facilities since 2004 as well as carrying out 2,000 unannounced visits already in 2009.

It explained that it spent £16 million tackling waste crime, which represented 15-16% of its total waste budget, and that £4 million of this over three years was earmarked to tackle waste exports in particular, including audits of sorting facilities.

EA director of operations David Jordan said: “Although the Brazil case is a very good example of where it has gone wrong, our view is that this is a very infrequent event.”

However, EA chief executive Dr Paul Leinster suggested that Duty of Care regulations could be strengthened to ensure that producers of waste had more responsibility for where it ultimately ended up.

And, Mr Jordan said there were some “gaps” in the sharing of information between government departments.

In particular, he said that there were legal impediments preventing HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) from sharing information on when waste was exported to the UK Borders Agency – which, if removed, would help border officials to inspect the waste alongside their other inspection activities, which is already the practice in the Netherlands.

Mr Jordan said: “The HMRC are not legally entitled to pass on this information to the UK Border Agency. That could be changed by a statutory instrument.”

Brokers

The Environment Agency's head of waste, Liz Parkes, also said that brokers – or middle men who sell materials but never handle them directly – could be difficult to track down and be held responsible for offences, especially those based abroad.

She said: “Brokers have always been one of the grey areas around the waste businesses and we are interested in whether more controls are needed. It needs some further work, not to over-regulate but to get the right balance.”

Ms Parkes added that the sentences handed down by the courts for waste export offences were not as severe as those for domestic fly-tipping offences – possibly because the impact was harder to gauge – and that the EA was carrying out training exercises with magistrates to help them understand that environmental crime was not victimless.

She said: “It would be good to see the courts leveraging the highest level of penalty they can.”

WEEE

Also during the session, the committee quizzed the agency on illegal exports of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) and electronic equipment sent for reuse.

Dr Leinster and Ms Parkes explained that there was currently a lot of illegal activity surrounding business WEEE as it often escaped the regulated WEEE system which was an issue of “growing concern”- and called for producers to take more responsibility for where the material ended up.

Ms Parkes said: “We have a producer responsibility scheme at the moment which is proving very effective…the bigger challenge is how to get manufacturers to look at the impact of individual products which we call individual producer responsibility.”

Benn

After the Environment Agency's evidence, environment secretary Hilary Benn was also grilled by the committee.

When asked if the Brazil case highlighted any “weaknesses” in the regulatory system, Mr Benn said it was impossible to inspect every container and that an intelligence-led approach coupled with the right message being sent by the courts was the right approach.

He said: “We are never going to have a system where people are going to peer into every container before it leaves the country”

And, following on from the EA's suggestions, Mr Benn explained that he had written a letter about the potential of closer working with the UK Border Agency to regulate waste exports – claiming that it made sense if someone was peering into a container anyway to check for illegal activity.

Controls

With regards to electrical appliances, Mr Benn also revealed that the European Commission was planning to strengthen the controls governing appliances sent for reuse as part of its revision of the WEEE Directive.

He said: “One of the things the commission want to do and we are supporting that is that it would be a legal requirement to show that if you are exporting electrical appliances for reuse you have to prove they work.”