EHJ June 2004, pages 176-178
From 16 July, co-disposal of hazardous and non-hazardous waste will be banned under EU legislation. But as the deadline fast approaches, the UK faces a potential shortfall in hazardous waste sites, prompting fears of a rise in fly-tipping. Nick Warburton reports

Anyone involved in environmental protection knows that illegal dumping and fly-tipping of hazardous waste can be a major headache, as a recent prosecution illustrates. In January, a Bournemouth company was ordered to pay £6,995 in fines and costs for using Guy Fawkes night as a cover to burn demolition waste. In this particular case, around 30 lorry loads of waste, including cabling, plastic and dirty timber had been ferried to a field in Wimborne Minster in Dorset on 7 November 2002 and set alight. Residents contacted the Environment Agency when they suspected plastics and other wastes were being burned.

Figures published by the Environment Agency last year show there was nearly a doubling in the number of serious pollution incidents involving fly-tipping between 2001 and 2002. But things could get a lot worse this summer when the ban on co-disposal comes into force.

Agreed in 1999, the EC Landfill Directive sets tough new rules for waste disposal. From mid-July, not only will co-disposal no longer be allowed, but hazardous waste will also have to be pre-treated and sent to special landfill sites. Depending on the nature of the hazardous waste and the level of treatment required, some types of waste can also go into separate "mono cells" in non-hazardous landfills, while others may be diverted away from landfill altogether.

Most of England and Wales' waste currently goes to 218 commercial landfill sites. However, once the new rules come into force, the number of landfills that can accommodate hazardous waste will reduce dramatically. The Environment Agency, which processes landfill permit applications under the pollution prevention and control regime, reports that waste management operators intend to run around 37 landfill sites from July.

Of these, no more than 12 are likely to be merchant sites (those that accept waste from multiple waste producers). The remainder will be in-house facilities within industry. However, according to April's Ends report, of the merchant sites, only around five or six are planning to accept a wide range of hazardous wastes. More telling, none is located in Wales or the West Midlands.

The Environment Agency has also received 30 applications from landfill operators to build separate "mono-cells" for taking stabilised hazardous waste, such as asbestos. Most of these sites are located in northern England and the midlands.

England and Wales are one of the largest producers of hazardous waste in Europe. Not surprisingly, for areas like Wales, which has no single merchant site, there are concerns about how hazardous waste will be managed post-16 July. South-east England also faces a problem. According to the Ends report, the region produces over a million tonnes of hazardous waste each year, but is only served by one hazardous landfill site. A large proportion of this waste is made up of construction and demolition materials. And as Friends of the Earth point out, as developers increasingly build homes on contaminated land sites, these hazardous materials are going to add pressure to future disposal routes.

A lot of the waste will probably end up being transported to other parts of the country where there are facilities, at least in the short-to-medium term. This is happening already. According to the Environment Agency report, Hazardous waste: a growing challenge, nearly 42 per cent of hazardous waste is transported across regional boundaries. After July, this figure could rise.

But as Hew Morgan, head of protection control at Swansea Council explains, transporting more waste increases the risk of accidents. "We're already seeing decisions that are being made on contaminated land sites, chemical waste and for other awkward waste streams that results in waste travelling longer and longer distances," he says. "The largest number of chemical incidents tends to be materials in transit. Just shuttling this stuff further and further around the country doesn't make sense."

The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs' decision to delay how it will apply the EU rules for treatment, which are known as waste acceptance criteria (Wac) until July 2005, has compounded the disposal problem. Wac is critical to the whole process because it determines the level of pre-treatment that is required before hazardous wastes can be consigned to landfill sites. Since the waste management industry needs to be certain what the standards are for treating waste so it can put in place the necessary treatment to meet those controls, investment in those facilities has been impossible.

A report produced for the government's advisory group, the Hazardous Waste Forum by consultants Enviros back in September 2003 forecast that 3.5 million tonnes of new treatment and disposal capacity is needed by 2005 by the latest. The problem is that most of this capacity is not likely to be found until 2009. Providing new hazardous waste management facilities generally require planning permission, which takes time.

This potential shortfall in treatment and disposal capacity is only part of the problem. While the UK currently producers over 5 million tonnes of hazardous waste each year, this figure is estimated to rise to 7.5 million tonnes once the Hazardous Waste Regulations are brought in this summer. The regulations encompass the revised European Waste Catalogue (EWC), which dramatically increases the number of hazardous waste streams. The new rules add around 250 items to the hazardous waste list. For the first time, items such as fluorescent tubes, scrap cars, televisions and computer monitors will need to be treated to remove hazardous materials. Furthermore, figures published by FoE show that hazardous waste is growing by an estimated 8 per cent a year.

Expanding the hazardous waste list also means more waste producers will come under the hazardous waste regime. According to evidence given to an environment, food and rural affairs committee in March by environment minister, Elliot Morley, the number of hazardous waste producers could rise to 750,000 once the revised list comes into force. The question that many people are asking is how many producers, particularly small-to-medium-sized businesses are aware that they are producing hazardous waste, which requires treatment from mid-July?

"We would expect the waste management companies who provide the service to small businesses to advise them on the changes," says Fran Lowe, landfill and hazardous waste implementation programme manager at the Environment Agency. "We would also expect Envirowise to be used more by business as a source of information and advice on how they could reduce their waste and what they might need to do in terms of compliance."

Others however, are concerned about the level of awareness in businesses. Mr Morgan says a lot of commercial operations don't realise that they are producing hazardous waste. Furthermore, many businesses, arguably, may not be aware that they have a legal duty of care to ensure they pass waste on to a legitimate waste carrier.

When the new rules do come into force, one thing is certain - waste management costs will rise. Figures published by the Environment Agency estimate the cost to business of managing hazardous waste responsibly could climb from £150m per year to £500m per year. The Hazardous Waste Forum has not been alone in expressing concern that rising costs could encourage "unscrupulous operators to circumvent the controls", for example by classifying hazardous waste as non-hazardous or through fly-tipping.

Mr Morgan says the hike in costs will create big problems in some areas of the country. "In Wales, we are going to be putting huge pressure on even legitimate operators who are going to have a job to find somewhere that is even willing to take their waste at a price."

This is already happening with contaminated land, he adds. "Producers may be faced with the prospect of having to phone dozens of sites to find someone who is willing to take the hazardous waste. Even when they find someone who is licensed to take it, they may not want it that month," he adds. "They may say, 'our stockpile's full, try us in six months' time'."

One possible result of all of this could be a large increase in stockpiling in the short-to-medium term. Last December, the Hazardous Waste Forum urged the government to make contingency plans, including emergency storage capacity.

However, as Mr Morgan explains, stockpiling and transferring materials can be risky business, especially for volatile substances. "Transfer stations can be more of a problem that the actual disposal itself," he says. "If you are moving drums around and opening large containers and pouring things into smaller containers, the potential for releases of hazardous substances is greater than if you are actually loading the front end of the process."

No one knows for certain exactly what will happen come July, but it is possible that price rises may result in a drop in hazardous waste production. "One of the problems is trying to second-guess what hazardous waste producers will do," says Mike Walker, director for policy at the Environment Services Association. "They might change their production processes quite quickly in order to reduce the amount of hazardous waste produced."

A less attractive prospect is an increase in fly-tipping. "If you are using a responsible licensing and legal waste manager, and then suddenly in July because of these new regulations the cost of waste management doubles...there is a real chance that there will be an increase in illegal activity," says Mr Walker. "People who come along and offer cut price waste management services and then fly-tip the stuff."

The Environment Agency estimates the combined cost of illegal hazardous waste activities in England and Wales could be as high as £100m. Sending out a clear message to would-be fly-tippers that this practice will not be tolerated and will result in severe punishment is essential as Claire Wilton, senior waste campaigner at Friends of the Earth, explains. "The Environment Agency needs to make it very clear what the disincentive is and what is going to happen to people who fly-tip because they've no longer got a nearby route for their hazardous waste."

Mr Walker agrees. "The Environment Agency must be geared up to investigate and enforce the regulations fully from July. There are a lot of incentives out there for illegal activity and there is a real danger that there will be a twilight world of fly-tipping."

One disincentive is to hand out huge fines for fly- tippers. However, as Danny Wilkinson, an Environment Agency spokesperson, points out, while maximum fines in magistrates are £20,000, and despite recent increases in the level of fines, the average remains low, at around £2,000. "Magistrates don't seem to take some of these matters as seriously as they should," adds Mr Morgan. "For environmental releases, they don't whack up the fines enough."

The new rules will also affect domestic waste. Research carried out for the National Household Hazardous Waste Forum shows that 90 per cent of local authorities in England currently offer some form of household hazardous waste collection service. Even so, the Hazardous Waste Forum believes that smaller items of hazardous household waste will probably be disposed of with ordinary household waste. It says that it is not uncommon for facilities at civic amenity sites to be abused by trade waste input. Its action plan recommends that staff at these sites is provided with training in identification, handling and health and safety of hazardous waste.

For FoE, the long-term solution to is to use "non-hazardous" materials in products wherever there is an alternative. European directives due to come into force in the UK over the next few years should reduce hazardous materials, but in the meantime, local authorities may need to brace themselves for an increase in illegal activity. It may not be a pretty sight.