Legislation Effecting Waste Management Companies

Please find some brief information about some of the legislation and regulation effecting waste management companies and waste producers today. For further information on this or other legislative maters please call WMR on 0870 067 2667.

Pre-Treatment Regulations

The Pre-treatment requirements of the Landfill Regulations came into force from October 2007.
This means that no waste can be disposed of at landfill unless it can be demonstrated to have undergone a treatment process.

The processes you employ must pass a three point test to determine if you have changed the characteristics of the waste by a physical, thermal, chemical or biological process.
In most cases, it is likely that this will mean a reduction in weight by removing a proportion of the waste through a recovery or recycling process, whether at source or through a Material Recovery Facility (MRF) or Waste Treatment Facility (WTF). In all cases in must reduce the environmental impact of the wastes you collect or handle.

WMR can help you find solutions to ensure that you comply with these requirements by advising you on the most suitable and economical solutions for your company.

WMR can also help to put you in touch with reprocessors which can act as a part solution to these regulations but also to reduce the effects of escalating landfill tax.
If you are a waste producer WMR can help find the best environmental options to manage your wastes, please see our Waste Manager Section.

Landfill Directive

The EU landfill directive has many target dates to effectively ban various waste types from landfill disposal often re categorizing them from non hazardous to hazardous wastes.

Waste stream already affected by the Directive include, Tyres, Plasterboard all wastes in liquid form.

WMR can help you if you produce, collect, handle or manage any of these waste streams.

Landfill Levy

Landfill tax was October introduced in 1996 as a new and additional environmental tax. The aim of the tax was to encourage waste producers to look at ways of avoiding the use of landfill as a means of disposal and encourage waste producers to look at recycling as a means of avoiding this new tax.

The “active” rate of tax, which applies to all non-inert waste streams came in at a rate of £8 per tonne and was quickly found to have a low apparent effect on waste disposal behavior.

By April 2010 the tax will stand at £48 per tonne and is set to be increased by £8 per tonne per annum until 2013 when it will reach £72 per tonne. This will be much closer to the levels imposed by other European states who are currently reporting much higher recycling rates than the UK.

We are clearly seeing the effects of the tax on waste producers, who are demanding new management and monitoring systems for their waste streams ( see Waste Manager ) and waste companies who are more willing to invest significant capital into new reprocessing and treatment technologies.