Most legislation on waste management in the UK derives from European Union directives. This briefing looks at the main EU directives on waste.

There are several stages in the policy process for the adoption of directives. First, the European Commission writes a working document showing an intention to propose a directive. After discussion, the working document can become a draft proposal for a directive. Then the directive is proposed by the European Commission. Subsequently, it is examined by the European Parliament, the Council of the European Union (made up of relevant ministers, varying according to the subject discussed) and other institutions. It typically takes 2 to 4 years for a directive to be adopted after it has been proposed. Once a directive has been adopted, member states are required to implement it within a specified time - usually two years [1][2].

The Landfill Directive sets targets to reduce landfilling of biodegradable [a] municipal waste to 75% of 1995 levels by 2006, 50% by 2009 and 35% by 2016. Countries heavily dependent on landfill, such as the UK, will be able to claim derogations (i.e. exemptions) to delay meeting the targets by four years, which means 2020.

The anaerobic decomposition of biodegradable municipalwaste in landfills produces emissions of methane, a greenhouse gas which causes climate change and is 8-10 times more potent that carbon dioxide. Reducing the biodegradable municipal waste going to landfill will therefore result in a reduction in methane emissions.

The Directive bans the co-disposal of hazardous and non-hazardous wastes and places bans or restrictions on the landfilling of liquid wastes, clinical wastes and other materials. The Directive also bans landfilling of whole tyres from 2003 and of shredded tyres from 2006.

Existing landfill sites need only comply with the Directive eight years after it is implemented in member states, i.e. 2009 [3][4][5].

Implementation in the UK
The consultation paper on the implementation of the Landfill Directive in England and Wales, released in October 2000, predicted hundreds of landfill site closures and high costs for landfill operators who remain in business. In the paper, the Government confirms that co-disposal is to be banned at all sites from 2004. But for non-hazardous waste sites, the paper proposes to exploit a loophole in the Directive allowing the UK to delay until 2009 the requirements to pre-treat [b] waste before landfill and to ban landfilling of tyres and liquids [6][7].

Friends of the Earth's view
This is an important directive and Friends of the Earth campaigned hard in 1996-98 to ensure that it was proposed. It will lead to a significant reduction of waste going to landfill (biodegradable waste represents 60% of all municipal waste) and reduce the emissions of methane, a potent climate change gas. The Landfill Directive should also lead to the more sustainable management of municipal waste, through more composting and other treatments such as anaerobic digestion.

FOE is very concerned, however, that in England and Wales landfill is being replaced by large scale incineration of waste. This is not a sustainable way of managing resources, and contributes to climate change because, when materialsare destroyed in incinerators, huge amounts of energy are required to replace them. FOE is calling for the separate collection of recyclable and compostable waste from all households.

This Directive would aim to promote the biological treatment of biodegradable waste (i.e. composting, anaerobic digestion and spreading on land) to help meet the targets of the Landfill Directive.

The Directive would cover not only municipal and similar waste, but also biodegradable residues produced by the agricultural, food and drink, wood processing, paper, leather, textiles and packaging industries, including wastewater treatment sludges produced in these sectors along with sewage treatment processes.

The suggested hierarchy for managing biodegradable waste (or biowaste) is as follows:
- Prevention or reduction of biowaste generation and contamination by pollutants.
- Reuse of biowaste such as cardboard.
- Recyclingc of separately collected wastes into the original material (such as paper or cardboard) whenever environmentally justified.
- Composting or anaerobic digestion of separately collected biowaste, that is not recycled into the original material, with the utilisation of compost or digestate for agricultural benefit or ecological improvement.
- Mechanical/biological treatment of biowaste.
- Use of biowaste as a source for generating energy.

The paper also suggests that member states would be obliged to set up separate collections of biodegradable waste in order to maximise the scope for composting and anaerobic digestion. Urban areas with over 100,000 inhabitants would be required to set up such systems within three years of the year of implementation. Urban areas with over 2,000 inhabitants would have five years to do the same.

It would also require the amount of residual municipal waste (material left over after source separation and unsuitable for biological treatment because of contamination with other wastes) to be reduced to the smallest amount possiblethrough separate collection of biowaste but also of packaging, paper, cardboard, glass, metals and hazardous waste.

Composting and anaerobic digestion would have to be carried out in ways that minimise air emissions and leaching. As for spreading on land, only treated biowaste would be allowed, except for those untreated biowastes specifically mentioned in Annex I of the working document (most uncontaminated organic wastes) and for vegetable plant waste generated and remaining on agricultural or forest land.

Implications for the UK
The requirement for biodegradable waste to be separately collected has massive implications for UK waste management, and will require fundamental changes in our existing collection systems. It will ensure green waste doorstep collections for households. Similarly, businesses will have to set up systems for managing their biowaste. Composting and anaerobic digestion, at the top of the proposed hierarchy will greatly increase. However adoption of this Directive could take another 2-4 years, so that requirements for separate collections of biowaste may not become law until 2008.

Friends of the Earth's view
Friends of the Earth welcomes the plan for a Directive on the Biological Treatment of Biological Waste, and the biowaste management hierarchy it proposes. Separate collections of compostable and recyclable materials from our waste is absolutely fundamental to successful recycling and composting schemes, and will minimize the contamination of organic waste by glass, metals, plastics etc and vice versa. It is the only way to create quality recycled products, such as compost.

Currently up to 80% of household waste is recyclable or compostable, and FOE is calling for every household in the country to have doorstep recycling and composting collection services.

The Incineration Directive aims to reduce emissions to air, water and land from the incineration of non-hazardous wastes, through the extension of emission controls to processes outside the scope of Directive on the Incineration of Hazardous Waste (94/67/EC), and through the imposition of more stringent controls on municipal waste incineration plants than those required by the two 1989 Directives - Directive on the Prevention of Air Pollution from New Municipal Waste Incineration Plants (89/369/EC) and Directive on the Reduction of Air Pollution from ExistingMunicipal Waste Incineration Plants (89/429/EC) - which were concerned only with certain emissions to air. The Incineration Directive will replace the three other directives mentioned above.

The Directive applies to a range of different types of plants: municipal waste, sewage sludge and clinical waste incinerators, plus a variety of less common and smaller plants, for example incinerators burning treated waste wood and waste oil, and co-incineration processes (including waste oils and tyres in cement kilns) and the combustion of wastes such as sewage sludge in conventional electricity generation plants.

The new air emission limit values for incinerators are found in table 1.

Table 1 - Air emission limit values for incinerators

Pollutants	Air emission limit values
Total dust	10 mg/m3 (#)
Gaseous and vaporous organic substances, expressed as total organic carbon	10 mg/m3 (#)
Hydrogen chloride (HCl)	10 mg/m3 (#)
Hydrogen fluoride (HF)	1 mg/m3 (#)
Sulphur dioxide (SO2)	50 mg/m3 (#)
Nitrogen monoxide (NO) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) expressed as nitrogen dioxide for existing incineration plants with a nominal capacity exceeding 6 tonnes per hour or new incineration plants	200 mg/m3 (*) (#)
Nitrogen monoxide (NO) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2), expressed as nitrogen dioxide for existing incineration plants with a nominal capacity of 6 tonnes per hour or less	400 mg/m3 (*)(#)
Cadmium + Thallium	total 0.05 mg/m3 (+)
Mercury	0.05 mg/m3 (+)
Antimony + Arsenic + Lead + Chromium + Cobalt + Copper + Manganese + Nickel + Vanadium	total 0.5 mg/m3 (+)
Dioxins and furans	0.1 ng/m3 (£)

(#) Daily average values
(+) Average over a period of 30 minutes to 8 hours
(£) Average over a period of 6 to 8 hours
(*) Until 1 January 2007, the emission limit value for NOx does not apply to plants only incinerating hazardous waste.

Emission limit values for cement kilns (see table 2) are not as stringent as those for other incineration processes on the basis of their inherently more polluting nature. The Directive adopts a Parliament amendment requiring NOx emissions from new cement kilns to be below 500mg/m3. Existing kilns, whether or not they presently burn wastes, will face a limit of only 800 mg/m3, and those using the wet process and burning less than three tonnes of waste per hour will be free to emit up to 1,200 mg/m3 until January 2008.

The Directive also established for the first time limits for thewaste water discharges from the cleaning of waste exhaust gases from incineration.

Table 2 - Air emission limit values for cement kilns

Pollutants	Air emission limit values
Total dust	30 mg/m3 (#)
Hydrogen chloride (HCl)	10 mg/m3 (#)
Hydrogen fluoride (HF)	1 mg/m3 (#)
NOx for existing plants	800 mg/m3 (#)
NOx for new plants	500 mg/m3 (#)
Cadmium + Thallium	total 0.05 mg/m3 (+)
Mercury	0.05 mg/m3 (+)
Antimony + Arsenic + Lead + Chromium + Cobalt + Copper + Manganese + Nickel + Vanadium	total 0.5 mg/m3 (+)
Dioxins and furans	0.1 ng/m3 (£)

(#) Daily average values
(+) Average over a period of 30 minutes to 8 hours
(£) Average over a period of 6 to 8 hours

Implications for the UK
All incinerators in the UK will have to meet the tighter emission requirements of this Directive by December 2002.

Friends of the Earth's view
Friends of the Earth is calling for a moratorium on any new incineration capacity in the country until targets and policies are in place to achieve recycling rates of 60-80%. We welcome a tightening of air emission limits for existing incinerators, but remain concerned over the environmental and health pollution caused by incineration of mixed municipal waste. The toxic substances in our waste do not disappear, and as the chimney technology improves, reducing hazards emitted to the air, the levels of toxins left behind in the incinerator ash increases. This ash then has to be sent to landfills, where it is a toxic timebomb for future generations.

The targets for the recovery and recycling of packaging and packaging waste by June 2001 were:
- at least 50 % by weight of packaging waste to be recovered;
- at least 25 % by weight of the totality of packaging materials contained in packaging waste to be recycled with a minimum of 15 % by weight for each packaging material.

Member States are required to take the necessary measures to ensure that systems are set up to provide for:
- the return and collection of used packaging and packaging waste from the consumer, other final user, or from the waste stream, in order to channel it to the most appropriate wastemanagement alternatives;
- the reuse or recovery (including recycling) of the packaging and packaging waste collected, in order to meet the objectives laid down in this Directive.

Member States are required to encourage the use of materials obtained from recycled packaging waste for the manufacturing of packaging and other products.

The recovery and recycling targets in the Directive need to be reviewed for 2001-2006 and these new targets will be included in the Packaging Waste Recovery and Recycling Targets Directive [see next section].

Implementation in the UK
The EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive was implemented in the UK through the Producer Responsibility Obligations (Packaging Waste) Regulations in 1997. Businesses with a turnover above £5 million (£2-5 million after 2000) and handling over 50 tonnes of packaging per year have to register with the Environment Agency or a compliance scheme and supply annual packaging flow information to prove they are meeting their recycling and recovery obligations [14][15]. Packaging Recovery Notes (PRNs) are issued when recycling and recovery take place, and can be traded between different businesses and compliance schemes.

Initially, obligated businesses, from packaging manufacturers to retailers, were required to recover in aggregate 52% of packaging waste by 2001 and recycle at least 16% of each material category. In 2000 these targets were increased to 58% recovery and 18% material-specific recycling, because the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions (DETR) calculated that without the changes, the UK would fail to achieve the European target to recover 50% of total packaging, and could consequently face daily fines for breaching EU law [16]. Domestic targets are higher than EU ones because the Producer Responsibility Regulations do not capture all packaging. Smaller businesses who are not obligated under the regulations still use and produce packaging.
                
Friends of the Earth's view
Unfortunately the Packaging Directive has not led to any significant increase in the recycling of packaging, which still forms a large part of the waste in our bins. The recycling targets in the Directive agreed in 1994 were disappointingly low, and the recovery target opened the door for incineration. FOE believes there should be no recovery target at all and that the targets for recycling should be much higher. There should also be a target for minimum levels of reuse of packaging, which is further up the waste hierarchy. We hope that the new Packaging Waste Recovery and Recycling Targets Directive will set much higher targets for recycling and reuse [see next section].

Implications for the UK
The higher recycling targets proposed in this directive will provide a considerable challenge to UK businesses, and significant investment will need to be made in more reprocessing facilities and recycling collection services. The UK currently has one of the worst records for packaging recycling in Europe, as shown by the tables 3, 4 and 5.

Friends of the Earth's view
Friends of the Earth strongly supports a new target of recycling 75% of packaging waste by 2006, with an increased minimum of 45% for each material. We also advocate the fixing of increased targets for a third five year phase from 2006 to 2011. This would provide a further incentive for producers to adapt their production methods and plan integrated systems for the reuse/recycling of materials.

We believe that Member States should also be required to ensure reuse of packaging. Studies which draw broad lifecycle parameters consistently suggest that packaging reuse systems are environmentally beneficial. The Commission should consider setting minimum reuse targets. A minimum
reuse target across Europe would ensure that market distortion is not an issue.

Table 3 - European steel packaging recycling 1999

Country	Rate
Germany	80%
Netherlands	78%
Austria	75%
Belgium	70%
Luxembourg	69%
Switzerland	66%
Sweden	62%
Norway	59%
France	47%
Spain	32%
UK	30%

Source: APEAL (Association of European Producers of Steel for Packaging), 1999, http://www.apeal.org/Contents/Base04.html

Table 4 - European aluminium can recycling 1998

Country	Rate
Switzerland	89%
Sweden	87%
Germany	86%
Finland	84%
Norway + Iceland	80%
Benelux	66%
Austria	50%
UK	38%
Spain	21%
France	19%

Source: European Aluminium Association, 1998

Table 5 - European container glass collection 1999

Country	Rate
Switzerland	93%
Netherlands	86%
Austria	84%
Sweden	84%
Norway	83%
Germany	81%
Finland	78%
Denmark	63%
France	55%
Portugal	42%
Italy	41%
Spain	40%
Ireland	35%
UK	25%

Source: FEVE, 1999

FOE believes that producers and traders of packaging shouldbe required to cover the costs of its return, collection, reuse and recycling. This provision will provide producers with a financial incentive to minimise packaging, or to design it for more efficient reuse or recycling.

Electrical and Electronic Equipment (EEE) includes large and small domestic appliances, electrical and electronic tools, toys, monitoring instruments, automatic dispensers as well as IT, consumer, lighting and medical equipment [19].

The Commission has been considering the following for this draft directive:
- Separate collection of WEEE: this would allow last owners to return WEEE from private households free of charge.
- Treatment: producers of EEE would need to set up systems to provide for the treatment of WEEE.
- Recovery/re-use/recycling: producers of EEE would be responsible for setting up recovery systems and achieving targets for collecting end-of-life equipment for 2006. For large household appliances, the recovery rate would be at least 80% by weight, and the re-use/ recycling rate 75%. For other appliances, the recovery rate would be at least 60% and the re-use/recycling rate 50%.
- Phasing out (with some exceptions) by 1 January 2008 of the heavy metals lead, cadmium, mercury and hexavalent chromium, and certain halogenated flame retardants - polybrominated biphenyls (PBBs) and polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE).

Implications for the UK
When it is adopted, the WEEE Directive will have to be transcribed into UK law, and mechanisms will have to be set up for the separate collection and recycling of electroscrap.

Friends of the Earth's view
Friends of the Earth welcomes this proposed Directive. It urges the EU to make separate collection of EEE mandatory, and make individual producers of WEEE responsible for its collection and treatment. FOE would also like legislation to ensure that goods are designed for reuse and recycling, and that high waste collection targets are set.

Friends of the Earth's view
FOE supported the End of Life Vehicles Directive, but was disappointed that it was watered down by the Council of Ministers. Original provisions to ban all use of cadmium, lead, mercury and certain forms of chromium were weakened and the introduction of producer liability was deferred until 2007. However, it is a step in the right direction.