Binning old waste disposal rules to cost business £7bn in decade
July 22, 2004
British businesses will have to pay up to £7 billion over the next decade to cover the cost of new waste disposal laws, a waste management lobby group claimed yesterday.
Dirk Hazell, chief executive of the Environmental Services Association, which represents waste management companies, said that the EU Landfill Directive would more than triple disposal costs.
The directive, which came into force yesterday, bans the disposal of hazardous and non-hazardous waste in the same landfill site. It also obliges anyone disposing of hazardous waste, including chemicals, electronic equipment and contaminated soil, to treat it before it is dumped.
Mr Hazell said that the waste management sector, worth between £5 billion and £6 billion a year, would have to spend £10 billion over the next ten years to pay for the new recycling and pre-treatment facilities required.
Of that sum, he estimated that the cost to business would be between £5 billion and £7 billion, depending on how successfully it managed to reduce its production of hazardous waste. Local authorities, which deal with household waste, would have to pay an extra £3 billion, he said.
Mr Hazell's projected figure is significantly higher than the government estimate. The Environment Agency expects the cost to business of managing hazardous waste to rise from £150 million a year to £500 million.
Businesses will also have to pay for transporting their hazardous waste farther under the new rules. Until yesterday there were about 280 landfill sites that could accept hazardous waste, but the Government has said that only 12 sites will now be able to accept the waste.
Not a single commercial site exists to process hazardous waste in Wales, the West Midlands or London.
Mr Hazell said that just one site - Port Clarence, in Teesside, with a capacity of 100,000 tons per year - has so far been permitted to accept hazardous waste. More than 2 million tons of hazardous or partially hazardous waste is currently sent to landfill sites each year.
Michael Roberts, director of business environment for the Confederation of British Industry, said: "The costs of complying with EU law have been made a lot higher because of the poor way we have gone about transposing it into legislation. Costs are being inflated higher than competitors in the EU."
Faye Clamp, of the Federation of Small Businesses, said small businesses would have to bear the cost of separating their waste and pay higher fees for its disposal. "The UK Government has known about this for five years, but the Government has failed to make small businesses aware that this is coming," she said.
The Environmental Services Association estimates that 75 per cent of businesses are unaware of their new obligations. A spokesman said: "The Government hasn't got a handle on the issue. It hasn't told us what the standards of infrastructure will be, and we can't build the infrastructure without standards."
This article originally appeared in The Times on 17 July 2004.
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