The minister was grilled last night by a committee of MPs which is probing the government’s handling of hazardous waste disposal. They heard Mr Meacher criticise the European Commission for failing to issue early enough its waste acceptance criteria for hazardous sites.
“It is extraordinary that it has taken three and a half years to for waste acceptance criteria in the landfill directive be issued. It has been left to the UK to take the lead. The commission is very laggard about coming forward with data,” Mr Meacher told the committee. He added that the government had done all it could to ensure that landfill for all waste streams would remain available.
Mr Meacher said the lateness of the criteria had meant that the industry did not know for certain which waste would be hazardous or non-hazardous. This had delayed the date by which the industry could say which types of sites it wished to operate.
“The criteria should have been agreed a year ago,” he fumed.
Lack of capacity
About 600,000 tonnes of waste will be banned from going to landfill under the directive, out of 2.5 million tonnes currently accepted.
Labour MP Paddy Tipping asked the minister if rumours were correct that there would be only 12 hazardous landfill sites, and if some parts of the country would have a complete lack of capacity.
Mr Meacher dismissed this as “pure conjecture”, but added: “If it looks as though there will be a serious lack of hazardous waste capacity in July 2004 we will have to take action quickly with the industry to fill the gap. If there is a gap I would expect the private sector, with the certainty of a market, to invest.”
Mr Meacher had earlier said that he estimated that between one-fifth and one-sixth of his time was spent on dealing with European environmental legislation “which I regard as a large proportion”.
He said he had asked civil servants for papers on the implementation of all future regulations so that “there are no more surprises”, such as occurred with the fridge recycling fiasco.
Written evidence to the MPs from the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs noted that “the capacity available for the landfilling of permitted hazardous waste after 16 July 2002 remains unclear. The choice of what sort of site to operate has to be a commercial one for operators. The information is commercially sensitive and it is therefore unlikely that a clear picture will emerge until very close to the implementation date.”
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