The European Commission’s circular economy package on recycling and making better use of resources within the EU could be scrapped or watered down, it has been revealed. The potential for scrapping the package has been raised by the new Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker who is reviewing all outstanding work from the previous regime – a complete set of…
Renewed concerns over England’s recycling rate
England’s recycling rate crept up by a mere 0.3 percentage points between 2012/13 to 2013/14, leading to renewed concern over the country’s ability to meet the EU recycling rate of 50% by 2020. The latest annual figures show that 43.5% of household waste was recycled, reused or composted in the 2013/14 financial year, representing a…
Dual use to be introduced in 2015
BIS have been working with the industry to review the interpretation of WEEE from private households. In response to the EU WEEE Directive, Ministers have concluded that as a country we need to finally introduce dual use for the classification of WEEE arising from businesses that may also be deemed consumer WEEE, ie. if it…
Educating Essex
BatteryBack has agreed with Essex County Council to provide schools in the Essex area with free Battery Bins enabling schools to have free collections. Each school will be provided with four 5-litre drums. Essex Council advertised this in their latest newsletter issued last week and so far we have received over 30 requests and are still…
‘Routinely check’ chemical classifications, warns Agency
The Environment Agency has warned operators to routinely check the chemical classifications they are using adding that waste operators may be ‘mismanaging’ some hazardous materials as out of date information is being used to classify the waste. This has the potential to pose a ‘serious risk’ to the environment, it adds. The latest guidelines on…
Defra’s policy vacuum ‘could jeopardise’ EU targets
Defra’s step back from implementing any new policies around waste and recycling could jeopardise progress towards the 50% by 2020 EU recycling targets, MPs have warned. The warning came in a report on waste management in England, compiled by the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, which took evidence from the waste industry, the Welsh Government…
Improvement seen in Q3 packaging recycling figures
Packaging recycling figures for the third quarter of 2014 show further improvement with compliance schemes predicting a cooling of PRN prices across the board. The provisional figures for July to September 2014, available on the National Waste Packaging Database, show a surplus in glass remelt, plastics and steel. However, there was a drop in the…
HSE warns waste industry to ‘avoid complacency’
The Health and Safety Executive’s Head of Waste has warned the industry to avoid getting complacent after the latest data revealed a reduction of worker injuries in the waste sector. The latest injury and ill health statistics from the HSE show that the number of reported injuries to waste and recycling workers fell to 486…
Compliance Update
Following on from the recent introduction of the WEEE2 Regulations, these are what some might regard as the final two pieces of the jigsaw. New Compliance Fees to be announced next February The new Compliance Fees will provide producer compliance schemes, who have not collected enough WEEE, an alternative means of meeting their members’ obligations….
EU raises the bar again
Following the recent publication of a new draft European Directive that set out the plans for managing waste over the next 20 years we thought it might be worth setting out “things to come”. It has a long way to go before it is law in each of the Member States but it is reasonable…