Community Waste Ltd, the company which operates the Milton Keynes materials recycling facility, was also ordered to pay £14,000 in costs in the case heard by Maidstone Crown Court yesterday.
But Philip Serfaty, co-director of Community Waste, claimed that the Judge “didn't even read the court files” before issuing the fine, and that both the prosecution and defence teams had also been misinformed about the case. And, he suggested mitigating factors had not been taken into account in the setting of the fine.
Containers
The case involved 11 containers of commingled recyclables stopped en route to India at Thamesport in Kent on October 13 and 14, 2005.
The Agency said in a statement today that the containers held waste that originated in Nottinghamshire and “appeared to contain council-collected rubbish and one of the containers was infested with maggots”.
It added that there were “cardboard, tins, plastic bottles, packaging, dog food cans, nappies, plastic flower pots, toothpaste tubes and yoghurt tubs, glass, metals and textiles” in some of the containers, which were labelled as paper-only.
Under the rules, it is illegal to export waste for disposal, but it can be sent abroad for recycling, if it is sorted properly and the destination country wishes to accept it.
“All 11 containers were banned from being exported because they illegally contained a mixture of waste,” said the Agency.
Regulatory waste officer Dr Helen Ahmed said: “We are delighted with the fine imposed on the company by the court, which reflects the seriousness of the offence – in his summing up the judge highlighted the potential damage that illegally shipped waste can cause to the environment and the people who would have had to deal with the waste in India.
“Mixed municipal waste is subject to stricter controls under the EU Waste Shipment Regulations, which mean that the Environment Agency needs prior notification of proposed shipments so that they can approve them before they go abroad.”
Community waste
Mr Serfaty, whose company has its head office in London, dismissed the judge's suggestion that the containers had posed a risk to the environment, saying that the material had been sent to one of India's top paper mills, which had won awards for its environmental management.
Speaking to letsrecycle.com, he accepted that the “material wasn't very good” within the 11 containers concerned, explaining that a major fire at the Milton Keynes MRF had seen the company's resources “stretched” at the time.
But, he said contamination levels within the containers had only been around 5-7%, and that the Agency had emphasised the contamination with strategically angled photography.
Community Waste deals with around 200,000 tonnes of household recyclables each year at Milton Keynes and depots in Sheffield and Doncaster. Mr Serfaty said after the Milton Keynes fire the “system broke down and mistakes were made”, however, he said there had been “massive efforts to improve” and “massive investment in quality” made since that period.
He challenged the Agency to inspect the quality at the MRF after its major re-build.
Commenting on the court case, Mr Serfaty suggested that even his own defence lawyers had not understood the complex nature of the waste shipments legislation, and the fact that there “has been no real interpretation of the law”. Some Agency officials accept some contamination, while others demand “zero contamination”, he said.
“Sometimes they send back containers that are absolutely perfect,” Mr Serfaty claimed.
“We've tried to get guidance on what is acceptable from the Agency,” said Mr Serfaty. “They've told us that it's for the courts to decide. They just want one company to go in and plead not guilty and hammer it out in court – but I can't afford to do that.”
Agency
The Agency said in its statement after the case that it will continue to pursue companies “who export waste illegally”, but insisted it did support the “legitimate and growing market abroad for recyclables”.
Dr Ahmed said of the Community Waste case: “While we don't apportion any blame to the councils involved, everyone has a duty to ensure their waste is being dealt with in the proper fashion by a reputable and licensed company.”
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