The regulations, which have been considerably delayed, have been published by the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and have also been formally laid before Parliament.
Requirements
A DEFRA statement explained that the Landfill Directive sets out a range of controls which must be applied to both new and existing landfill sites. While some of the Directive's requirements reflect those already in place in Britain under the Waste Management Licensing Regime, it will introduce key changes to current landfill practice. These include:
- The separation of landfills into three types: hazardous, non-hazardous or inert waste.
The requirement to treat most wastes before landfill.
Bans on the disposal of certain wastes going to landfill for disposal including liquid wastes, certain hazardous wastes, and tyres.
Introduction of waste acceptance criteria setting out the types of waste that
can be accepted at each of the three types of landfill.
A key point of the regulations is that they will end the current UK practice of
co-disposing (in effect mixing) of hazardous and non-hazardous waste by 2004.
Operators of existing landfill sites will be required to produce site
conditioning plans by July 16 2002 setting out details of the site and any
corrective measures the operator intends to undertake to meet the requirements
of the Directive.
Conditioning
In advance of the Regulations coming into effect, the
Environment Agency has published and circulated a pack of information and forms for site conditioning plans to landfill operators. The DEFRA statement accompanying the regulations urged landfill site operators to “make the most of the time available before 16 July 2002 to prepare their conditioning plans as the Regulations will make it an offence not to submit a plan.”
The DEFRA statement added that it continues to work with the Environment Agency, the waste management industry, waste producers and other stakeholders to resolve a number of outstanding issues to ensure implementation of the Directive proceeds as smoothly as possible. “This will include setting national dates for the ban on non-hazardous liquids going to landfill and the requirement to treat all waste before landfilling.”
More attention will have to be paid to the recycling of waste and other treatments ahead of landfill. This is because Article 6 requires all waste going to landfill to be pre-treated before disposal “unless it is inert waste for which treatment is not technically feasible or other wastes for which treatment would not contribute to the aims of the Directive.”
A copy of the Regulations can be found on the HMSO website at
legislation.hmso.gov.uk .
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