The Circular Economy versus waste legislation

While the Circular Economy has become the buzz phrase for sustainability, the waste industry generally finds the concept somewhat puzzling.

The last ten years have seen accelerated growth in recycling, driven primarily by cost benefits, but also encouraged by legislation such as the Packaging Waste Regulations and until recently, local authority targets.

The waste industry has always understood the concept of recycling, both for commercial and environmental reasons. Increased landfill costs in particular, have justified long term investment in facilities that have enabled the amount of waste disposal to landfill to halve in the last decade. But for the waste industry, regardless of any new buzz words, when it is discarded by the end user, waste is waste because thats what the rules say.

In its simplest definition, the Circular Economy is about materials never becoming waste. Products at the end of life are reconstituted as new products and we end up with a global supply chain that never has to use virgin resources. The economics of manufacture and the expectations of the consumer will never enable that to happen of course, but it is the ultimate aspiration behind the CE movement and increasingly, the politicians in Brussels.

The recent English Prevention Plan consultation has been much derided for being too limp and ineffective. Lacking in ambition seems to be the main reaction as stakeholders bemoan the lack of any real initiative. But how can a Government force businesses to stop producing waste?

Discarded

One of the dilemmas it faces is the increasing tension between waste legislation and reuse. To prevent waste, more must be reused so that it does not become waste in the first place. But if something is discarded, does the end user have a choice? Under current legislation, they do not if it is discarded for treatment or disposal i.e. if a process has to be applied to it. Recycling is clearly not reuse, but to reuse materials in a Circular Economy, they have to go through a process of extraction and by its very nature, that process defines the material as waste.

To take an example. UPVC window frames are removed from a house, taken to a facility where they are treated as a raw material that is ground, extruded and turned into new windows. Waste process or manufacturing process?

Legislation process

Under current legislation, surely a waste process, but under a waste prevention banner, surely a reuse process. But as waste, the windows must be carried under a waste transfer note by a waste carrier to a permitted facility subject to separate planning approvals and regulatory enforcement. It is therefore classed as waste until it is extruded. And another example. A laptop is collected for dismantling. It must be collected as hazardous waste and is therefore subject to the process and cost of consignment notes. Again, waste carrier to a waste facility for a waste process when in fact, it is all about preventing that laptop become real waste.

For the Circular Economy to function, there must therefore be some joined up thinking. Are our waste rules appropriate to the new order? Do we need some sensible re-structuring of waste controls to be much more risk related and to encourage waste prevention? Ie, where something is discarded for dismantling for materials reuse, should that really be classified as waste? Or should it simply be reclassified as raw material?

Clearly, there must be safeguards to avoid the abuse we already see in the export of items for sham reuse, for instance. And there must also be systems in place that actually measure what is discarded into end of life reuse processes. But as things stand at the moment, the attempt to avoid the classification of waste by simply renaming it a resource make not a jot of difference if legislation keeps it firmly under the waste label.