Waste Management: The Changing Legislative Climate

Overview

What all the new Directives and Regulations mean and how to ensure you comply with your statutory duties

This new report explains all the most recent changes to waste policy and legislation and what you need to do in practice.

It explains what all the new legislation, directives and regulations mean in practice and what you need to do to stay within the law.

Recent far-reaching changes to the law and practice affect everyone – commerce and industry, central and local government, householders.

This report is written for officers and managers in both the public and private sectors responsible for:

• Waste management
• Environmental management
• Pollution management
• Contaminated land management

Key issues covered in the report

1. Main aims of EU and UK policy: shifting waste away from landfill to recovery and recycling.

2. Regulation of waste facilities under the Pollution Prevention and Control regime and recent initiatives to clamp down on fly-tipping.

3. Impact of two EU Directives that have brought about a major reshaping of waste management in the UK – the Hazardous Waste Directive and the Landfill Directive.

4. Practical information for hazardous waste producers: new duties under the new Regulations and how to assess whether waste is hazardous. Around 180 waste streams became hazardous for the first time in 2005 – is your waste one of them?

5. The Waste Acceptance Criteria: practical steps which hazardous waste producers must take to comply with the Landfill Regulations. Many companies are not yet aware of their statutory duties to notify the Agency.

6. Packaging Regulations; producer responsibility is now being extended to two further waste streams – end of life vehicles (ELVs) and waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE).

7. The impact of the Landfill Directive on Local Authorities.

Content

CHAPTER 1: Policy framework

• Principles of environmental and waste legislation
• UK policy
• Achieving the objectives

CHAPTER 2: Overview of waste regulation

• Definition of waste
• Permitting and licensing of waste facilities
• Duty of care and fly-tipping
• Other recent legislation with relevance to waste

CHAPTER 3: Hazardous waste

• Hazardous waste arisings
• What is hazardous waste?
• Duties under the hazardous waste regulations

CHAPTER 4: Landfill regulations and their impact

• Overview of the landfill directive
• The co-disposal ban and the ‘hazardous waste crisis’
• Waste acceptance criteria (WAC)
• Technical details of the WAC
• Characterisation, testing and sampling (WAP)
• Conclusion

CHAPTER 5: Producer responsibility

• General principles
• Packaging
• End-of-life vehicles
• Waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE)

CHAPTER 6: Local authorities and municipal waste

• Local authority responsibilities
• Local authorities and the landfill directive
• Landfill allowances and trading scheme (LATS)
• Implication of landfill diversion targets
• Changes to planning principles

The author

Caroline Hand is a writer and lecturer on environmental legislation and policy, specialising in waste management. She is Consultant Editor of Croner’s waste management information service and has been responsible for providing the quarterly updates since 1992. Together with Jeff Cooper of the Environment Agency, she also gives regular seminars on waste management for Croner Training. Her previous responsibilities include two years as Specialist Assistant to the House of Commons Environment Committee.