What a waste!

I’ve written about this before but I think it bears repeating because things have changed somewhat. I’m talking about junk mail. I would suggest that it is worth reviewing you junk load at least once a year. Why? I’ll come back to that.

First, I’ll redefine what I think junk mail is. It is mail that arrives unasked for that gets stripped of its plastic wrapper and goes straight into the recycling bin. The wrapper goes into general waste. Very, very, very occasionally something turns up that turns out to be useful but generally, not.

So, what’s the problem? It’s two seconds work to strip and bin.

The problem, of course, is that you are then paying to have that waste disposed of. Think of it as legalised flytipping. You might think that it doesn’t cost so much but in an office of twenty you will often find that a good part of the recycling bin is full of unwanted adverts, unread magazines and the stuff that comes tucked inside them. And from an environmental point of view, tree have died, been processed into paper, printed and then gone straight into the bin. Much of the stuff isn’t even good for composting due to the gloss and colour.

The other thing is, important stuff can get lost in among the junk. I found my voter registration form this morning whilst I was picking up piles of junk mail to photograph. (I’m working from home and therefore don’t have access to the recycling bins dotted around the office.)

In fact the stuff in the photograph bears looking at. Some of it is addressed to the former occupant of my house – four years gone. When I remember I send these ads back with ‘No longer at this address’ scrawled across them. I have been doing this for four years. I’m still getting stuff. This is complete junk and a total waste for the sender too.

Then there are take away menus. This is inevitable. I live in a student area. Students live on takeaways. Leafletting my street every other month is cost effective because the student have probably lost the menus in that time. My method with these is to immediately throw away anything not in ten minutes walking distance. I used to keep the local ones. Now I don’t. I throw away all the local ones too and look the menu up online. If they don’t have a website they don’t get any business from me. (It must be said that the Bilash (red (meat) and green (vegetarian) menus) is an excellent take away but I do resent the number of leaflets I get from them.)

There is the Natural Collection catalogue. I’ve bought stuff from them, on and off, for years. I thought I asked them to stop sending me catalogues last year when I did a concerted campaign to stop my junk but I can’t find my email so maybe not. An amail has gone today. The send me regular alerts on at least two of the email addresses anyway. I don’t need the paper copy.

And then there is Christian Aid. This was the charity I donated my sponsor money to when I lived on £1 a day earlier this year. Now they email me regularly and send me lots of paper. I get the emails. I don’t need the paper. I hadn’t even opened them. They were just sitting on the junk pile. Now I’ve taken them apart, put the freepost envelopes for reuse and binned the rest. I know that any charity wants more supporters and more money from their current supporters but I would actually prefer them to spend the money I donate on helping people in need, not printing and posting stuff to me. I get the emails! In the past I made a one-off donation to a charity that I suspect spent all my money on sending me letters asking for more cash. They didn’t get any more cash. An email has gone out to Christian Aid.

The point is, in a year a business will have contact with a great number of new organisations. A good number of those will take the opportunity to send their marketing to you in paper form. Those need to be culled. Also, we asked a number of membership organisations to only send one magazine. We are a small office. We can share. At one point I think we were getting six copies of The Environmentalist. The problem here, I guess, is perhaps adverisers need a certain number of paper copies to go out before they are willing to buy space. Whatever. You are probably going to have to remind some organisations to which you subscribe that you really meant, ‘Only one please.’

Times are difficult and the one thing that doesn’t go down in a recession is the marketing budget but that doesn’t mean that any organisation wants to pay for getting rid of junk paper. So, to add to the improvement log:

• Rather than just bin the rubbish, spend a day asking people not to send paper marketing – you can offer your email address as an alternative
• Revisit the organisations that are sending you magazines. Ask them to keep it to one for the whole organisation or none at all and read it on line.
• Talk to the people who send you catalogues. In some cases the paper catalogue is useful but often it is much easier to search and buy on line. Again, cut the number of catalogues received from each supplier to one or none at all.
• Make sure that the residual paper is recycled.

Environmental grumbling

There has been a flurry of Linkedin emails in my Yahoo! inbox recently and so this morning I checked to see which of my former colleagues I am now linked to. It’s rather exciting, finding connections that I thought had been broken as people have moved on. And it’s fascinating wondering how Linkedin knows I know some people.

This morning there was nothing other than people updating their profiles, which I skimmed quickly, and then wandered back to the front page and looked at the Yahoo! news headlines displayed for my delectation and generally ignored unless I’m particularly bored.

This morning’s crop were as uninspiring as ever but two of them stood out as very worrisome. It was announced that the government is proposing to fund a return to once a week bin collections and that they are intending to raise the speed limit on motorways to 80mph.

The reason given for the speed limit rise is the economic benefits from shorter journey times. I don’t drive very much these days but when I do it is generally during rush hour and I frequently find, on the M1 and M62, that 70mph is just a dream.

I have a number of concerns about this proposal. One is that with the speed limit set at 70mph people generally drive at 90mph. Raise it to 80mph coupled with a weird aversion to the use of speed cameras and people will tend to drive at 100mph. This increases the fuel used, the carbon dioxide emissions and the chance of an accident, which stops traffic dead for an appreciable amount of time.

I have, over the years, spent many unproductive hours sitting in a car waiting for the accident in front of me to be cleared. The most recent of these was on the Snake Pass on 17^th September. Whilst we sat there two fire engines, two ambulances and a police car drove past. As it happens the Snake is an A road so we were able to turn round and find an alternate route. This is obviously not possible on a motorway so an accident results in stationary traffic, sometimes for hours, whilst the wreckage is cleared away and the bodies helicoptered out.

The Transport Secretary noted also ‘the benefit of bringing millions of ordinary motorists, who are otherwise law abiding, back on the right side of the law.’

This seems to me to be, frankly, ludicrous. In no other area would we change the law for the benefit of the law breaker.

Wonderfully the head of the RAC Foundation Professor Stephen Glaister seems to have similar thoughts to mine. He commented, ‘Drivers travelling that 10mph quicker might reach their destination sooner, but will use about 20% more fuel and emit 20% more CO2. There is also likely to be a slight increase in road casualties.’ He continued, ‘Before you change a speed limit, you have to know whether you are doing it for safety, economic or environmental reasons. Unfortunately not all of these are compatible.’

So, that’s the first unsettling news from ‘The Greenest Government Ever’. The next is the idea that the government should pay councils to restore weekly bin collections. This is a fascinating one given that we are supposed to be reducing the amount of waste we produce.

Why should we want to reduce waste? Three main reasons. One is that biodegradable waste buried in landfill site releases methane. This is both dangerously explosive if it builds up and a potent greenhouse gas, around 23% worse than carbon dioxide. One is that resource is becoming more expensive – plastic is made from oil and as the price of that rises the cost of plastic increases. And the final one is that we have limited landfill space left in the UK and no-one is terribly keen on having new ones excavated and filled near them. And then, of course, there is the hidden cost of managing waste. We are not aware of the cost of all that packaging but we pay for it in our grocery bills. And then we pay for it again in our council tax bills as the local authority’s bin men magic it away for us.


There are some fascinating waste facts here.

In Sheffield we still have weekly collections of general waste and fortnightly collections of recyclables. The fact that we are ‘lucky’ makes no difference to me. I usually put my general waste bin out monthly (I don’t eat meat and I compost my vegetable waste) and my recycling bin quarterly. I’d like to be able to rent out bin space to my neighbours. I might sound holier than thou. It’s not because my soul is pure but that I’m watching the pennies with two kids at university. Having my milk delivered, making food from scratch and taking packed lunches to work greatly reduces the amount of packaging waste and I don’t drink pop so no bulky PET bottles in the bin.

I could do a lot more to reduce my waste and I’d be more than happy to take a council tax reduction to do so. Or, more to the point, save some of the jobs and services that are being cut under the government austerity measures. One of the comments (by Stephen) on the news story went like this:

‘We’re going to make you unemployed.

We’re going to make you lose your home

We’re going to charge you £9000 for university

We’re going to sack servicemen

We’re going to get rid of Aircraft and ships.

We’re going tor raise VAT

We’re going to let the banks off the hook

We’re are going to stay in Europe

We’re going to keep raising fuel prices

We’re going to alter political boundaries

We’re going to cut NHS Spending

We’re going to cut education spending

We’re going to increase foreign aid

We’re going to involve us all in conflicts that don’t concern us

But we’re going to collect your dustbins weekly, aren't we clever?’

(Apostrophes added)

I don’t agree with all of his criticisms but I do agree that the government should perhaps think more carefully about what best to spend its (our) money on. We could all do a bit more, waste less (and that means wasting less money) and retain more essential services. Mr Pickles believes that every household in England has a basic right to have their rubbish collected every week. I think there are some basic rights that are more important.

What a waste

Amanda and I were out and about this week. We presented to the construction industry at Ecoshowcase in Reading. It is a rewarding thing to do and I love chatting to the delegates after the presentations. It's also nice to be staying somewhere with a colleague instead of being in my lonely hotel room on my own. We stayed at the Travelodge at Reading Services (Eastbound). As we checked in our receptionist asked us when our breakfast bags should be delivered to our rooms. Oh.

I'm not a fan of breakfast bags. I know it is probably good for the hotel but it can't be good either for the environment or for society at large. It meant that Amanda and I sat in our rooms separately and ate our almost-but-not-quite-food instead of having a sociable breakfast and discussing our day ahead. It also means that not so many people need to be employed which isn't good for the local economy. And, goodness! How much waste?

The Waste (England and Wales) Regulations 2011

The following is a legal update from Catherine:

The Waste (England and Wales) Regulations 2011 (finally!) came into force at the end of March, and implement changes to waste legislation made by the Revised Waste Framework Directive, as well as making long-awaited changes to the waste carriers and brokers regime. If you have any sort of dealings with waste as a producer, carrier or treatment/disposal facility (so pretty much everyone!), then read on, and make yourself aware of the changes:

The waste hierarchy has now been given legal effect, rather than merely being a principle. From October 2011 there will be a declaration on WTNs and HWCNs that companies have applied the waste hierarchy.

SIC codes will have to be included on WTNs as well as HWCNs – again, this won’t take effect until October 2011.

For new environmental permits, they will contain conditions which state that operators will have to apply the waste management hierarchy (such conditions will be added to existing permits when they are reviewed).

New category of waste “dealer” = those who use an agent to buy and sell waste

New 2 tier system of registration for carriers, brokers and dealers:

Upper tier carrier or broker:

If you carry/broker/deal in other people’s controlled waste (unless you fall under a lower tier)

If you carry/broker/deal in your own construction and demolition waste

Existing carriers and brokers won’t have to do anything (and dealer will be automatically added to existing registration)

Lasts for 3 years as existing registration does

Fee for registration

Lower tier (referred to in the Regs as “specified persons”:

If you carry/broker/deal in animal by-products, waste from a mine or a quarry or waste from premises used for agriculture

If you carry/broker/deal in other people’s controlled waste and you are a waste collection, disposal or regulation authority or a charity or voluntary organisation (i.e. charities are no longer exempt) – those that are currently registered as exempt will automatically be transferred to the lower tier

If you normally and regularly carry controlled waste produced by your own business (other than construction or demolition waste) by end of December 2013

Registration lasts indefinitely

Free registration

A single registration will cover carrier/broker/dealer. In order to simplify the transition, the EA will automatically consider all registered carriers as carriers and dealers and all registered brokers as brokers and dealers.

Some changes to hazardous waste = a new category, H13 Sensitizing, will be added to the list of properties defining waste as hazardous (the former category H13 now becomes H15). This means that some previously non-hazardous wastes may be reclassified as hazardous wastes e.g. ecotoxicity added to the properties that can define a leachate as hazardous.

The Regs explicitly state that transfer notes can be provided electronically.

From January 2015, a duty is placed on anyone collecting waste paper, metal, plastic or glass must ensure that where these waste streams have been separately collected, they are not mixed with other waste or other material with different properties.

Thoughts from a motorway service station

Some interesting thoughts from Alison:

It was a hot and sticky August day and the threat of rain was in the air. We pulled off the M40 on the way back from another carbon-intensive wedding in London to fill up our (reasonably fuel efficient) car. My husband dealt with the fuel payment (can it really cost £70 to fill up a 1.9 litre engine car these days?!) and I walked back to the actual services to buy some lunch.

The services resembled a cross between Alton Towers during the holidays and that old favourite TV programme ‘Supermarket Sweep’. There was a hideous queue for the ladies, every seat (inside and outside) was taken with families on their way to or on their way back from holiday destinations and people were literally throwing themselves on food wherever they could grab it from.

But quite aside from the enochlophobia that suddenly came over me I was completely overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of consumption that was going on in those 50 metres squared. Cappucinos, fast food, packaged sandwiches, sweets, crisps, fruit (not much), canned drinks. I stopped and looked around me and could not see one single person without their mouths open stuffing food and drink into it.

I freely admit that on this occasion I joined them. I usually try and make our own lunch/dinner in the car, not because I’m an eco-warrior, but because I refuse to dish out for the extortionate prices they charge you at the service stations (talk about a closed market). I paid £10 for two lots of sandwiches and two bags of crisps – ouch.

If this much consumption of food and drink and this much waste was being generated at this one small service station off the M40 at that precise moment in time (which probably accounted for 0.00001% of the UK’s population), how much was being consumed and wasted around the world at that moment? A scary thought.

So what can we do? Make our own sandwiches? Well yes, but that may not be the long-term, universal solution of choice. Somehow we have to wake people up to the reality of having a finite amount of space and resources on this earth. Organisations and the culture therein can play a big part in this – what type of culture do you advocate at your organization? Do you have a Green Travel Plan but your Directors still turn up to work in their 3 litre engine sports cars? Do you order in food for meetings from local companies but then always thrown half of it away?

We have to learn to complete the sentences which we are beginning to start. “We have a Green Travel Plan…..and everyone in our company from the top to the bottom is committed to trying to uphold the plan and reduce carbon emissions”. “We order food locally…….and have implemented a system to ensure that we do not over-order and that leftovers are distributed to staff”.

We are still thinking one dimensionally about resource efficiency and consumption – it is time we stopped leaving things unsaid.

In (environmental) praise of budget hotels

I have recently been spending quite a lot of time away from home. It's part of the job and I don't mind it, though it's by no means the glamorous lifestyle it seemed from the outside. When the client is paying expenses, staying at a luxury hotel is not an option. It has always been our policy to stay at budget hotels but it has taken a while for me to embrace the idea wholeheartedly. After three weeks, off and on, living in a Travelodge I think I've finally got there, mainly because I've been impressed by the reduction in environmental impacts demonstrated by the budgets.

Those little bottles full of toiletries are a huge generator of waste and, quite honestly, it's very rare that I love the contents. The honourable exception is Hotel du Vin who provide large bottles of Arran Aromatic toiletries that you are encouraged to take away at the end of your stay. These are so nice that I am tempted to scrape the money together for another stay with them at some point, when they have an offer on, maybe. But generally, no, most hotels provide only-just-good-enough toiletries. It would be untrue to say that I haven't accumulated a stash of half used tiny bottles in the pockets of my luggage that I used to use when staying in budget hotels. Following my recent lengthy stay, however, my nasty little bottles ran out. No problem. There was a Lush nearby (you can tell!) and I followed the overpowering scent inside and bought one of their solid shampoos. What a jolly good idea! No plastic to dispose of, no liquid to leak into my bag. Why hadn't I done this before?

I thought about the toiletry issue whilst packing my bag to go home. I always take my own toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant, face-wipes and moisturiser. Why not add a shampoo/conditioner bar to the bag and save myself (and my client) £20 (at least) per night? All I want from a hotel when I'm staying away from home on business is a clean comfortable room with a window that opens within walking distance of a reasonable restaurant. I can live without the pictures on the walls, the trouser press and the 'free' packet of biscuits. The shower and sink fittings tend to be water efficient to minimise the water cost to the hotel and I like this too.

Only two things would make my experience of the Romford Travelodge better. One would be free wifi and the other is a mirror in natural light that didn't have a sink or a desk in front of it so that I can see to put my mascara on. Never mind. I've bought another dongle and I just hope for the best with the make-up.

Legislation, legislation, legislation - A post by Catherine

The beginning of April was pretty busy in terms of legislation coming into force, so I thought I’d do a bit of a roundup on all the key pieces that will affect most businesses, as well as the odd bit which is a bit more specific!

The Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2010 further extends the scope of environmental permitting to cover discharge consents, groundwater authorisations and radioactive substances authorisations. If you currently have a discharge or authorisation for any of these activities, you don’t have to re-apply, they will automatically become environmental permits. Revisions to waste exemptions, which we blogged about previously here, are also contained within these new Regulations. Check the Environment Agency’s table to ensure you register your new exemptions by the end of the transitional period.

The £8 per annum landfill tax escalator continues to raise the cost per tonne, and from 1st April the standard rate is now £48 per tonne for active waste, with inert waste staying at £2.50 per tonne.

The Carbon Reduction Commitment Energy Efficiency Scheme went live on the 1st April. If you have a half-hourly meter and used 6,000 MWh of electricity in 2008, you have between now and the end of September to register here. Last week there was a live question and answer session on the CRC with an expert panel, including representatives from the Environment Agency and IEMA, and you can read the discussions here.

The Flood and Water Management Act 2010 received Royal Assent on 8th April. The Bill was introduced partly as a response to the severe flooding of summer 2007. It places obligations on the Environment Agency to develop and maintain a national flood and coastal erosion risk management strategy. One of the more interesting provisions is the removal of the automatic right for new developments to connect to sewers, which is to encourage the uptake of sustainable urban drainage systems (SUDs). You can read the full text of the Act here.

From April 1st, duty rates for biodiesel and bioethanol increased to the same level as conventional petrol and diesel, but the Biodiesel Duty (Biodiesel Produced From Waste Cooking Oil) (Relief) Regulations 2010 means that biodiesel derived from waste cooking oil will continue to benefit from a 20 pence per litre duty until 2013.

With the date now fixed for the general election, it will be interesting in the coming month to see how the main parties play their ‘environmental’ cards, and what hints we’ll get for any future environmental legislation.

Changes in Government funded environmental support

At the end of many of the courses we run there is a slide, or a number of slides, that tells delegates about they can go for help on their environmental issues. Many of the websites and information sources we direct people towards are government funded. We've always pointed people towards Envirowise, WRAP and NISP.

From the 1^st April 2010 these organisations will be merged into one and called WRAP. The following organisations will no longer be stand alone bodies: Envirowise, National Industrial Symbiosis Programme (NISP), Centre for Remanufacturing and Reuse (CRR), Construction Resources and Waste Platform (CRWP), Action Sustainability (AS), and BREW (Business Resource Efficiency & Waste Centre) for Local Authorities but will be merged into one – Waste & Resources Action Programme(WRAP).

WRAP is now the single point of contact for businesses and organisations looking for support and guidance on improving their resource efficiency.

The Envirowise helpline and website will continue to operate until June 2010, but the WRAP website (www.wrap.org.uk) now offers the same access to information on material resource efficiency. Advice and support is also available through the WRAP resource efficiency helpline on 0808 100 2040.

I guess this makes sense in many ways and now our final information slide will be much shorter but I will miss the Envirowise website which I have used endlessly over the last decade.

Waste exemptions

UPDATE:

Following a detailed examination of the new legislation and a long discussion with the EA today, Catherine was able to confirm that, contrary to what I had written below, if you used to have an exemption 27 you no longer need to register. It now falls under one of the non-waste framework exemptions which do not need to be registered. In effect, with these exemptions, it is taken that you have an automatic exemption.

We mentioned the new waste exemptions a few weeks ago. The Environment Agency has a really useful page about it explaining the details, listing the new exemptions and giving a link to register your exemptions.

The new exemptions come into effect on 6th April 2010. From this date you will be able to register by following the link here.

Full information on these changes including guidance can be found here.

Resource issues

There have been a number of discussions recently about resource issues. It is constantly in the news but never anywhere near the top level. During the various courses we run, particularly waste awareness courses, we look at resource efficiency and speak about fossil fuel (the UK's natural gas production has been declining since 2004), water (the south east of England is officially water-stressed) rare earth depletion and food security issues.

Peak Oil, something that has been causing some concern for a while, has finally caused Lord Hunt, the energy minister, to meet industrialists to calm rising fears over peak oil. According to the Guardian's report 'the government has agreed to undertake more work on whether the UK needs to take action to avoid the massive dislocation that could be caused by the early onset of 'peak oil'.' This follows on from a taskforce report in February which warned that Britain is unprepared for [peak oil and recommended packages including legislation, new technologies and behaviour-change incentives.

Peak Oil is a fairly well-known threat. Less well known resource issues have been raised by Sciencebloggers. Ethan Siegel is fascinating about helium, why we have any at all on Earth, why we need it and why it is a non-renewable resource. Dr Isis writes about 'why your medical care depends on weapons grade uranium'.

Business Week reports on further developments in China's management of various important metals including the rare earth elements so important in our modern technology and the Times updates us on the potential for phosphate depletion, a potentially disastrous issue that has been creeping up on us for some time now.

Finally, information about food security in the UK has been very nicely summarised in a one page document by DEFRA which the BBC publicised last year.

I don't have any particularly cheery words to say about any of the above other than to say that DEFRA seems to be more optimistic than I feel, and I really hope they are right.

Drowning in junk mail

There have been a lot of articles in the papers recently about junk mail. It used to be that we all wrote letters. These days there are not so many letters but we still want the option of having our Mothering Sunday cards delivered (trip out at lunchtime planned for Catherine and me to buy cards!) and this won't happen unless there is a nationwide service. It feels like unsolicited mail has increased perhaps because in a recession, companies need to get information on their products out to us. In the three years I have been in the house I have only once bought something from unsolicited mail so that is an awful lot of trees cut down to make instant recycling.

From my personal point of view the increase will just mean I put out the paper recycling bin twice as often. I have a canvas bag hanging on the back of my door which I sort junk into directly and I transfer this to my wheelie bin every other week. My issue with it is the amount of needless waste produced that my council then have to deal with, and the stupid use of resources to produce something that I regard as a nuisance.

There are some things that can be done and over the last three years I have cut down the unwanted material that comes through the door. You need to be aware that junk comes in different varieties.

The unsolicited mail that comes from the Royal Mail and can be stopped is unaddressed. If there is no address on the mail or it is addressed to 'the occupier' then you can contact Royal Mail and opt out. The details of how to do it with all the warnings about the information you might miss can be found at their website.

If you are getting junk addressed to you, either by name or to 'the occupier' followed by your address then Royal Mail is obliged to deliver it. It is, in fact, unlawful for them not to deliver it. In those circumstances you can contact the mailing preference service who will warn you about the great opportunities you might miss but give the option of, again, opting out of receiving their junk. On the same website you can find a telephone and an email opt out as well. This will cut down a lot of unsolicited mail although companies that you have bought goods from will continue to send their catalogues. This site will also allow you to stop advertising mail to former occupants of your house.

The third thing to do is to contact the people sending you unsolicited mailings directly. I have done this successfully with a number of companies. Usually I send a polite email asking the company not to send me any more catalogues. This works for companies I buy from too. I ask for an email catalogue rather than a paper one, not least because I am more likely to buy online from catalogues than send a hard copy of an order but also because I can delete anything that I am not interested in. This does not work for business addresses sadly or the ECUS paper recycling bin would be a lot more empty.

Yet another thing I do is to return mail for the people who lived here before me to the sender. I am never likely to buy a BMW. There is no point the garage sending out regular invitations to the former occupant. This has worked well.

The final thing is to put a notice on your door asking people not to deliver unsolicited mail. Apparently this works rather well. Stop Junk Mail will sell you a letterbox sticker or you can do your own. I am going to do my own so that I can say no to commercial leaflets and to free newspapers but yes to community information.

I suppose one more thing to think about. Maybe we should think about writing letters again. The immediacy of email is great but I've got two computer stacks full of no longer accessible emails and even if I eventually get them back, emails tend not to be things you treasure or even place a lot of importance on. You can see this in the weighting given to letters over emails in the 'real world'. I have sent many emails to my MP and my Prime Minister over the years but the only reply from the PM was when I composed a letter, printed it out, put it in an envelop, put a rather nice stamp on it and posted it. I've received very few replies to my emails to my MP.

I'm quite happy with the move to email catalogues and two sentence emails but I love to receive letters. Perhaps I should think about sending some.

You need to know this - Waste Legislation from Catherine

When Yvonne first mentioned she was going to start an ECUS Environmental Management blog, I thought it was a great idea, although I knew full well it was only a matter of time before she coerced gently persuaded me into writing something. As I’m one of those sad people who finds environmental legislation really interesting, what could be better I thought, than to write about the forthcoming Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations?!

Exemptions are required for waste management activities that have a fairly low environmental impact but still require a certain element of control from the regulator. The activities covered range from simply storing waste on site, to crushing it, to more complex activities such as spreading agricultural waste on land. What most businesses probably don’t realise is that they automatically have a waste exemption under Schedule 3, Part 2 of the Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2007. Exemptions in this Part are ‘unregisterable’ and pretty much every business producing waste will automatically fall under the paragraph 52 “temporary storage of waste on the site where it is produced” exemption.

The new Regulations are due to come into force on April so I spent part of my train journey down to Somerset last week getting clued up on them, and was actually pleasantly surprised. The Environment Agency held a series of consultation workshops last year and I went along to one in Birmingham. The delegates were a mixed bag; consultants, environmental managers and operators. The poor Agency representative got a bit of a grilling as the initial consultations suggested a £50 charge per exemption, to be renewed every year. Operators who used mobile crushers on construction sites were also concerned, as the proposed new limits would mean that many of them would require a standard permit for mobile plant rather than an exemption.

So after numerous consultations, it’s interesting to see the actual outcome, which I will summarise in a few succinct bullet points:

• The two tier system of complex and simple exemptions has been removed – activities will either require an exemption or a standard environmental permit;
• Only exemptions relating to refurbishment of WEEE are chargeable, contrary to the initial proposals;
• Exemptions will need to be renewed every three years and will appear on the Agency’s Public Registers;
• The relevant EWC codes are provided for all waste streams covered;
• Exemptions are split into categories:
• U (use of waste) 1-16
• T (treatment of waste) 1-33
• D (disposal of waste) 1-8
• S (storage of waste) 1-3
  
  

It remains to be seen how successful the amendments are once the new Regulations are in force, but my personal view is that they’re a great improvement on the old exemptions. They’re much clearer and more specific as to the type of activity and waste stream. But the most surprising bit is hidden away in the Part 2 unregisterable exemptions. Whereas previously there were limits on the quantities of waste that could be stored, these no longer exist. The only criteria under the new Regulations is that waste cannot be stored for longer than 12 months and it must be stored in a secure place, and this applies to hazardous waste as well. So that means in theory it’s perfectly acceptable for a company to store over 23,000 litres liquid hazardous waste or waste oil without being regulated for it! Which leads us on to the inadequacy of the Oil Storage Regulations, but that’s another story for another day…

Hunting for training images

I'm in Scotland at the moment. I came up to deliver a 'Know your Waste' course last week at the University of Edinburgh and I'm staying to deliver a CIWM Construction WAC course next week, which has left me with a free weekend here. What to do on a dull Saturday in North Lanarkshire? I'm just completing an Introduction to Renewable Energy course on behalf of EAUC and I wanted a few images to use so, after a visit to the local farmers market, we went looking for wind turbines. In much of England they are quite difficult to find but here there are a few elegant herds of them on the horizon. This lovely threesome appeared a little while ago alongside the M74. How convenient. We stood gazing in the chill breeze as they swept their blades almost silently through the air. So that's my first set of images. I'm thinking Scotland isn't the place to be looking for effective photovoltaic energy capture.