Both the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Environment Agency said yesterday that everyone involved in the export chain for waste materials, including materials recycling facilities, will be monitored under the regulations which come into force on July 12 2007.
However, he went on to say that while exports play an important part in improving the UK's recycling rates, a number of factors needed to be taken into account.
“We need to ensure that if our waste is recycled overseas, it makes an environmentally sound contribution to reducing demand for global resources. There must be adequate controls on exports of waste to protect the environment and human health and the carbon benefits from the recycling should outweigh the carbon impact of waste movements.”
The volume of exports overseas was put by Mr Hathaway at 4 million tonnes of recovered paper, with 50% going to China; 8.1 million tonnes of metal, with 30% to Turkey and 5% to China; and 440,000 tonnes of plastics, with 70% going to Hong Kong.
All this material, he said, is subject to the Basel Convention which sets the global framework for the transboundary movement of waste and is based on prior informed consent.
Regulations
The big change from July 12 is how the UK implements the European Union's Waste Shipments Regulation and revisions to these were approved by ministers last week, said Mr Hathaway.
He explained that the European regulations implement EU commitments under the Basel Convention as well as OECD rules. The revised regulations will bring in more generic waste codes, simplified procedures and include non-notified waste in the scope of the rules.”
They also include, the WRAP meeting heard, the designation of UK environment agencies as the competent authorities to administer the regulations, the provision of wider powers to charge exporters with offences and, importantly, a much wider definition of who can be prosecuted, including “the transporter, freight forwarder, and any other person involved in shipment.”
Mr Hathaway cautioned that anyone involved in the exports of recyclables who breached regulations would find it much harder to evade the rules because of “this enhancement of Duty of Care”.
The other side of the regulations sees countries which are receiving waste materials – such as paper and plastics – having to register their position on imports with the European Union.
Mr Hathaway said that the response from China “is fairly recently in. Exporters need to be registered with their authorities and have the necessary paperwork in order to ship, but Chinese authorities may still want to apply particular controls. There are talks with China on this. India has said exports are OK, Sri Lanka has said no.”
Agency
UK regulations were signed off last week, with the Agencies designated as competent authorities with powers to tackle offences and penalties.
Speaking on the same subject at the WRAP event, Liz Parkes, head of waste at the Environment Agency, said she welcomed the new powers the regulations gave to the Agency.
She said: “We have an opportunity with the regulations coming into force on July 12th to get the rules right for the future, with tougher sanctions and chances to intervene at different stages in the supply chain. For me prosecution is a failure. We want to move our efforts increasingly upstream an do less work at ports and more at materials recycling facilities and checking quality outputs. We also want to do more work upstream with producers including local authorities. “
However, the Environment Agency's head of waste added that more work was needed to monitor “green list” waste, which does not require notification from the Agency to be sent abroad as it is supposed to consist of single stream recyclable material.
Ms Parkes said this waste accounted for over 10 million tonnes of material a year as opposed to 100,000 tonnes of pre-notified exports.
She said: “We think further discussions are needed on the best way of controlling the green waste system. We need to be clear on the standards and I see not just the Environment Agency having a role in that but also people who make the material so people can readily access what the standards are and not plead ignorance.”
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