The report, which was published this morning (19 October) said the lack of government action on the issue is akin to “decriminalisation” of waste crime and set out a list of recommendations to tackle it (see letsrecycle.com story).
In response, the ESA, which represents the UK’s resources and waste management industry, said it has “long championed the need for tougher sanctions on waste criminals”, adding that the PAC’s findings echo much of what it has previously found in its ‘counting the cost of waste crime’ report.
The PAC report says the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and the Environment Agency are only making “slow and piecemeal” progress in implementing the Resources and Waste Strategy. It concludes that there is still no plan to reach the government’s target of eliminating waste crime by 2043 nor a means of tracking progress against this goal.
The damning PAC inquiry report sets out a depressingly familiar analysis
- Jacob Hayler, ESA
Jacob Hayler, the ESA’s executive director, said: “The damning PAC inquiry report sets out a depressingly familiar analysis of the impact of waste crime and the lack of progress made to tackle it, while also highlighting that current approaches appear to be failing.
“Waste crime is increasing, enforcement is decreasing and, in this ‘evolutionary arms race’, the criminals appear to be winning – viewing paltry sanctions as little more than a business expense and brazenly operating undeterred by under-resourced enforcement agencies.”
‘Agree’
Mr Hayler added that the ESA agrees with the PAC report’s helpful recommendations on waste crime, “which largely mirror those we made in our 2021 ‘counting cost of waste crime’ report.”
He said: “These recommendations advocate fast-tracking of regulatory reforms to tackle waste crime; drastically improving data and metrics to properly capture the impact and better benchmark enforcement progress; as well as stronger enforcement and tougher sanctions, so that the fine fits the crime.
“In particular, we would like to see stronger application of duty of care requirements on waste producers and better use being made of the landfill tax illegal disposals regulations, alongside much more urgent reform of the carriers, brokers and dealers regime and the rapid introduction of digital waste tracking.”
Report
The PAC report said that interventions such as landfill tax and local charges for disposing of waste create “perverse” financial incentives to commit waste crime, with penalties not proving effective.
It claims HMRC has only pursued one prosecution for landfill tax evasion – ‘Operation Nosedive’ – which “failed” at a cost to the public of £3.5 million.
The PAC is also concerned about the levels of illegal waste exports, which “the Environment Agency is not doing enough to prevent”. Most illegal exports end up in non-OECD countries, the committee says, “where controls on the harms it may cause and capacity to ameliorate them are less.”
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