E N V I R O N M E N TA L M A N A G E M E N T R E P O R T Focus on Waste Management Mark Yoxon, Stephen Burnley and Toni Gladding ENVI RON MENTAL MANAGEMENT REPORT Trends and Best Practice in Waste Management 10 20 30 61 ENVIRON MENTAL MANAGEMENT REPORT Trends and Best Practice in Waste Management Mark Yoxon, Stephen Burnley and Toni Gladding First published in the UK in 2006 by BSI 389 Chiswick High Road London W4 4AL in association with The Open University Press Walton Hall Milton Keynes MK7 6AA © The Open University 2006 All rights reserved Except as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without prior permission in writing from the publisher 10 Whilst every care has been taken in developing and compiling this publication, BSI accepts no liability for any loss or damage caused, arising directly or indirectly in connection with reliance on its contents except to the extent that such liability may not be excluded in law The right of Mark Yoxon, Stephen Burnley and Toni Gladding to be identified as the authors of this Work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Designs and Patents Act 1988 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this report is available from the British Library Copyright, BIP 21 02 ISBN 0-580-4841 2-2 20 30 Typeset in Akzidenz Grotesk and Minion by Florence Production Ltd, Stoodleigh, Devon Printed in Great Britain by MPG Books, Bodmin, Cornwall 61 Contents Introduction to the report Chapter summary Some examples of cost savings Some examples of fines and prosecutions Benefits of waste management What is waste? Chapter summary Waste in general Identifying waste in the workplace Waste terminology 11 How much waste we produce? 13 Why bother with waste? 17 Chapter summary 17 Introduction 18 Keeping on the right side of the law 20 The financial drive 22 Commercial pressures 25 Environmental aspects 27 What should I with my waste? 29 How to manage waste 31 Chapter summary 31 What is effective waste management? 32 A waste review – the seven steps to effective waste management 34 An introduction to key waste legislation 49 Chapter summary 49 Background – who are the regulators? 49 European directives 50 Waste strategies 53 CO N TE N TS The Landfill Directive 56 The Environmental Protection Act and Duty of Care 57 Packaging waste 60 Hazardous waste 61 WEEE Directive 63 End-of-life vehicles 65 Waste management in relation to other management systems 67 Chapter summary 67 Introduction 68 10 Why integrate waste management with other management systems? 68 Integration 69 Integration in practice 73 Waste terminology 83 Gateways to help and support 89 Legal issues 89 General enquiries 90 Technical enquiries 90 20 Other useful contacts 91 Appendices Checklists for waste review History of waste and recycling Outline of legislative drivers for waste management and likely future impacts on business Case study solutions for Chapter 93 01 09 21 30 61 vi An executive summary Waste costs your business money On average this adds up to 4.5% of turnover or approximately £650 per employee per year Most businesses significantly underestimate waste costs, often by a factor of You pay for raw materials, and any that don’t end up in the product or service you provide become waste, attracting further costs for storage, treatment and disposal Disposal costs are rising year on year Savings and payback are measured in months, not years Effective waste management will improve competitiveness and the bottom line Consider your turnover to profit ratio If you could save even the average 4.5% by minimizing or eliminating waste could you match this figure by increasing sales? Alongside the potential cost savings sit several other drivers for addressing waste management • Legislation ratchets up year on year; keeping ahead of the game makes business sense and adds up to measurable benefit • A whole raft of stakeholders, from banks and insurance companies to non-governmental organizations, shareholders and the public, expect and increasingly demand that business improves its environmental performance Alongside energy management, waste management is one of the easiest and most beneficial ways of addressing these issues Effective waste management is straightforward, and can often be achieved with simple changes to operational procedures It is a surprise that so often it is a missed opportunity The purpose of this report is to provide the tools and techniques to unlock the benefits of effective waste management Chapter sets out the background and gives examples to show that waste management equals business benefit Chapter answers the question ‘What is waste?’ and unmasks the hidden activities that contribute to lost profits Chapter expands the business case for waste management and includes details of the reasons for addressing waste issues, i.e the legal, fiscal and market advantages vii AN EXECU TI VE S U M M ARY Chapter provides the ‘How to’ details of a waste review to take stock of what is actually happening and to develop organizational intelligence on what causes waste, where it is being generated and how to make informed management decisions to develop a waste management strategy Chapter expands the introduction to waste legislation in Chapter and sets the scene for existing and future legislative drives for waste management Chapter provides guidelines for integrating waste management activities with existing or planned management systems such as quality and health and safety It makes the business case for integration rather than replication of effort Chapter sets out some of the main terms associated with waste and waste management 10 Chapter is intended to provide authoritative sources of help and advice Finally, a series of appendices provide information to supplement the main body of the report 20 30 61 viii TRE N D S AN D B EST PRACTI CE I N WASTE M AN AG E M E N T National drivers Waste Strategies for England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales • • • Focus mainly on MSW in terms of targets Reflect sustainable policy Overarching strategy for sustainable development Underpins policy development Tackling waste one of seven key priorities for the future Headline indicators include waste Special/Hazardous Waste Regulations • • • • • 116 10 producers 20 Implement the packaging directive Slow progress in the UK to date Failures in meeting targets Public consultation 2004 on extension of waste controls to include agricultural waste apply from 2005 Uncontrolled burying or burning of agricultural waste on farms prohibited Household Waste Recycling Bill • Changes emphasis from waste managers to waste producers; registration of waste Agricultural Waste – Waste Management Controls • Now updated to take into consideration the changes to the Hazardous Waste List Producer Responsibility Obligations (Packaging Waste) Regulations 997 • • • Set targets and deadlines U K Sustainable Development Strategy • • • • 30 By 201 all households have a collection of at least two recyclates separate from the remainder of the waste Duty is placed on English waste collection authorities The aim of the bill is to increase the recycling rate, which currently stands at 7.7%, by helping local authorities achieve their statutory recycling targets, which underpin 61 APPE N D I X O U TLI N E FO R LEG I S LATI VE D RI VE RS FO R WASTE M AN AG E M E N T national targets to recycle or compost at least 25% of household waste by 2005, 30% by 201 and 33% by 201 Waste Not Want Not, Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit, November 2002 • • • • Main focus is MSW and Landfill Directive requirements Identifies priority areas and makes recommendations for action Targets waste growth, improving data and research, and raising awareness Success measures for the strategy include reducing waste growth to 2% per year by 2006; 50% of households carrying out home composting by 2006; rollout of kerbside collection; higher recycling and/or composting targets; 30% of collection authorities to have tried incentive-based schemes by 2005/6 Making More with Less, Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit, November 2001 • Targets for long-term improvements in resource productivity and reductions in waste and pollution • • • Development of economic instruments to improve resource productivity Sustainable development at the core of procurement policies Encourages corporate social responsibility Best Value Performance Indicators (BVPIs) • The duty of continuous improvement for local authorities as set by the Local Government Act 999 • Indicates performance of local authority in a range of different sectors, including waste management • • Focus of BVPIs reflect the focus of the national waste strategies Drives local authorities’ efforts in recycling and composting, as performance is compared to others Landfill Tax • Aims to encourage waste producers to produce less waste, recover more value from waste, and divert more waste from disposal • Currently at £2 per tonne for inert waste e.g rocks and soil, and £1 per tonne for all other landfilled waste • Will increase by a minimum of £3 thereafter towards a target of £35 per tonne by 201 117 TRE N D S AN D B EST PRACTI CE I N WASTE M AN AG E M E N T Aggregates Levy • • Came into effect April 2002 Aims to address the environmental costs associated with quarrying operations, reduce demand for aggregate and encourage the use of alternative materials where possible • • £1 60 per tonne Sustainability Fund Grant Scheme, currently being reviewed for 2006 Waste and Emissions Trading Bill • Landfill allowance scheme to reduce amount of biodegradable municipal waste going to landfill • • Intends to support UK in meeting Landfill Directive targets Waste disposal authorities will be able to bank, borrow or transfer allowances Framework for Sustainable Consumption and Production • Focuses on decoupling economic growth and environmental degradation: decoupling indicators for waste and resources • • • Provides the direction for the government to take forward sustainable consumption and production • 10 Increases the productivity of material and energy use Promotes the corporate consumer practising more sustainable consumption Life-cycle analysis of products and services 20 Local delivery Commercial opportunities • • • • 118 Private Finance Initiatives & Public Private Partnerships Technological developments Market advantages 30 Diversification Public behaviour • • • Consumer needs and demands Availability of choices Acceptability, opportunity and role 61 APPE N D I X O U TLI N E FO R LEG I S LATI VE D RI VE RS FO R WASTE M AN AG E M E N T Waste growth • Reliability of data on waste growth: Municipal Solid Waste, Commercial and Industrial Waste, Construction and Demolition Waste • • • Targets to reduce waste growth in Waste Not Want Not Decoupling of economic growth with waste growth Producers and consumers – relationship and conflicts 119 10 20 30 61 Appendix 4: Case study solutions for Chapter 11 Outline a case for integrating environmental and health and safety management within a company such as your own Solution This should include elements such as the following • A well-planned integrated management system (IMS) is likely to operate more costeffectively than separate systems, and facilitate decision-making that best reflects the overall needs of the organization • An IMS offers the prospect of more rewarding career opportunities for specialists in each discipline • The objectives and processes of management systems are essentially the same • Integration should reduce duplication, for example in personnel, meetings, computerized record-keeping software, audits and paperwork • Integration should reduce the possibility of resolving problems at the expense of creating new difficulties in other disciplines • Existing quality task procedures may be developed more easily within an IMS to incorporate the needs of health and safety and environmental performance, and there would be greater certainty that the procedures properly incorporated these needs • An IMS should involve timely overall system reviews where momentum in one element of an IMS may drive forward other elements that might otherwise become moribund In contrast, independent systems could develop without regard to other management system elements leading to increasing incompatibility • Expertise in each discipline could be more readily brought together to address specific issues This would promote the exchange of fruitful initiatives (e.g attitude surveys) and techniques (e.g risk assessment and problem-solving methodologies) between the disciplines Moreover, all the specialists, working together, are likely to arrive at optimum solutions that take fully into account the needs of each discipline 1 Adapted from Open University – T835, Integrated Safety, Health & Environmental Management 2003 21 TRE N D S AN D B EST PRACTI CE I N WASTE M AN AG E M E N T • • The IMS may be more readily linked with management arrangements for other purposes, e.g product safety and security – in cases where these are not already part of an IMS An IMS should minimize distortions in resource allocations in separate systems asso- ciated with: o a determination to retain current priorities, despite contrary evidence; o personnel responsible for one management system being more effective champions of their discipline; and o variations in the immediacy and precision of feedback; for example, quality assurance feedback is usually rapid and statistically reliable, whereas there may be a time delay of several years before an organization has statistically significant evidence of the effectiveness of an OSH initiative • A positive culture in one function may usefully be carried over to the others everyone involved Relevant specialists may continue to concentrate on the area of their core expertise and further specialist training may not be needed • The models on which each management system is based may appear compatible, but there are conceptual differences that may be difficult to reconcile For example, quality audits assess compliance with a system standard, however deficient, whereas health and safety audit should evaluate effectiveness, as well as compliance Furthermore, • • • 22 10 The existing systems may simply work well The process of integration may threaten the coherence and consistency of current arrangements that have the support of • What arguments might there be against integration? • 8 20 uncertainties regarding the meaning of key terms – already a problem in health and safety – would be exacerbated in an IMS An IMS could become over-centralized and over-complex without the capacity to give sufficient consideration of local needs and constraints Already many employers and employees are sceptical of the excessive bureaucracy of existing management systems 30 The time during which an organization is planning and implementing an integrated system is a period of organizational vulnerability Existing procedures may lapse, or be found wanting, at the moment when key personnel are focusing attention on the development of new systems System requirements may vary across the topics covered, e.g an organization may require a simple quality system, but a more complex health and safety or environ- 61 APPE N D I X CAS E STU DY S O LU TI O N S FO R CH APTE R mental performance system The IMS could introduce unreasonable bureaucracy into, in this case, quality management • There may be distortions in IMS coherence because: o BS EN ISO environmental performance and quality standards are certificatible, but the BS guide to occupational health and safety management is not; and o health and safety and environmental performance are underpinned by statute, but quality management system requirements are largely determined by customer specification; o professional/organizational rivalries may impair the collective operation of the system Typically, a senior quality manager might seek to impose quality audit obj ectives on a more j unior health and safety team In contrast, the quality management team might resent supervision by an environmental manager who lacks an intimate knowledge of quality control statistical techniques; o regulators and single- topic auditors may have difficulty evaluating their part of the IMS when it is ( quite properly) interwoven with other parts of no concern to the evaluator; o the work of external consultations may be impaired because the needs of business confidentiality could prevent them taking a rounded view of elements of the IMS; o a powerful integrated team may reduce the ownership of the topics by line management; and o a negative culture in one topic may unwittingly be carried over to the others What issues might influence the setting of priorities for action when implementing an integrated management system? The issues that may influence the setting of priorities are likely to include legal pressures, ‘image’ issues, stakeholder interests including customer pressures, corporate/parent company influences, and neighbours 23 BIP 21 02 B SI Th e O p e n G ro u p H e a d q u a rte rs Wa l to n Ch i swi ck H i g h M i l to n Lo n d o n Ro a d S ta n d a rd s I n sti tu ti o n i s i n co rp o te d b y Ro ya l Ke yn e s M K7 AA W4 4AL www b s i -g l o b a l co m Th e B ri ti sh U n i ve rsi ty Hall Ch a rte r www o p e n a c u k