Landfill tax escalated for fifth year in a row.

With a view to incentivising local authorities and businesses alike into developing recycling and recovery infrastructure, landfill tax has been escalated for a fifth year in a row. The rise from the 2011/12 rate of £56 per tonne represents the fifth consecutive year that the tax has risen by an ‘escalator’ of £8. This escalator is set to rise again next year, with a floor under the 2014 rate of £80 per tonne until 2020.

In his Budget statement last month, Chancellor George Osborne confirmed that Landfill Tax would continue to rise year on year, reaching £64 per tonne this financial year and hitting £72 per tonne in April 2013.

The Chancellor also confirmed that the lower rate of landfill tax which applies to inert material, would remain frozen at £2.50 per tonne, the level that it reached in 2008. This rate is to remain at its current level in 2013-14, but it is unclear whether there will be further changes in later years.

The Budget also lowered the contributions landfill operators can make to environmental bodies under the Landfill Communities Fund. Previously landfill operators were required to contribute 6.2% of their landfill tax liability but, but the amended rate, which also came into effect yesterday, has been set at 5.6%.

In his 2012 Budget statement, the Chancellor said: “The value of the landfill communities fund for 2012–13 will remain unchanged at £78.1 million. As a result, the cap on contributions by landfill operators will be amended to 5.6 per cent. Future decisions on the value of the fund will take into account the level of unspent funds held by environmental bodies.”

April 1 also marks the end of the exemption from landfill tax for waste arising from the reclamation of contaminated land. The move was announced in October 2008, and is expected to raise around £40 million in additional revenue for the treasury As a result, any such waste now sent to landfill will be subject to landfill tax at the appropriate rate.

What the recast WEEE directive means for the UK?

 
The WEEE directive was ratified into law by the European Union in 2003. Some three years later, the UK adopted the legislation after agreement in Parliament and signing into law by the Crown. The Directive came into force in 2007, imposing new guidelines upon the recovery and treatment of waste electrical and electronic equipment. In essence, the then new legislation aimed at developing a networked treatment system that imposed levvies upon manufacturers or producers of equipment so as to fund the recovery and recycling of the resultant post consumer waste at the end of it’s useful life. Note that this incorporates the word “consumer”, which in this instance is very apt, given that it was aimed at waste generated by the General Public.
 

WEEE Recycling Industry:
 
At the time, an existing and thriving industry existed, aimed solely at post Commercial waste electronic equipment derived solely from IT equipment- ie office based computer hardware. The WEEE directive, by design was not aimed squarely at this sector, although it did in effect place a burden upon the business sector in terms of “duty of care” with regards to it’s end-of-life disposal. The directive was clear in that it was the Business’ responsibility to fund the disposal part of the equipment’s lifecycle. Since the inception of the WEEE directive and it’s adoption by the UK in 2007, more emphasis has been placed upon the responsible treatment/ recovery of this waste and the business sector is now astutely aware of the need to source and employ a proficient partner as part of the disposal process. This is never more so apparent than where a business holds or intents to hold ISO (international Standards Organisation) certification simply because an added “Duty” is placed upon the certified company to conduct itself in a dilligent manner.
 

Strasburg: Recast of WEEE Directive, Jan 2012
 
However, dilligence aside, the WEEE directive is at present undergoing a complete overhaul, with it’s final draft having been ratified (Jan 2012) by an overwhelming majority in the EU parlianment (95% of member representatives voted for the change-630 to 11 and four abstentions), at its plenary in Strasbourg on 19 January, the agreement sealed with the Council on 20 December 2011 on the draft Directive on waste electronic and electrical equipment. Impending changes are seen by many as a step in the right direction for the WEEE directive and waste management as a whole. However, for some, the incumbent changes bring with them significant issues.
 
Reasons for the Change
 
The need to bring about changes to the WEEE directive were highlighted in 2009, at a time when EU member states were aiming for a 4kg per capita recycling rate (4kgs per person per member state per annum). Germany highlighted significiant issues associated with the recycling system, in that the WEEE directive placed significant emphasis upon the re-use of WEEE in it’s current form (once refurbished, it could be re-sold as EEE and distributed outside of the EU). It was becoming more and more apparent that member states could not control the export of WEEE under the guise of EEE and estimates started to point towards as much as 80% of the waste being exported without prior treatment (ie recycling, repair or refurbishment). (Note that MEPs have recently confirmed this during debate in Strasborg, where it was shown that 53 million tonnes of WEEE were generated in 2009 but only 18% collected for recycling.) Highlighted by Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and many other international organisations as a catastrophe, it soon became apparent that much of the waste was being treated (recycled) in developing counrties in appauling conditions with absolutely no consideration towards the health and well-being of those carrying out the work. In effect children were simply scavanging through the waste, burning carcenogenic plastics and PCB bearing circuit boards in the vein attempt to recover precious materials/ metals from the wastes. However, by 2010, the German Environment Agency gave stark warnings that short comings associated with the increasing cross continent trade in WEEE were in effect financially damaging due to the volumes of Gold and silver being shipped for treatment elsewhere. Many operators working towards the collecting and moving of large volumes of waste were cutting both corners and damaging their own economy in an attempt maintain their own turnover with least possible capital investment. As a result, container loads of untested, untreated and hazardous WEEE were being sold for export at remarkably low prices. In return, Operators inside the EU needed little prior capital investment to carry out the works, could offer their services for next to nothing and could sell the waste on to exporters who then employed cheap labour in the disassembly and recovery process. However, the countries receiving the wastes, were in effect being handed 24 kilos of gold and 250 kilos of silver for every 1 million mobile phones.

Continue Reading: ]]> http://www.it-green.co.uk/uk_business_recycling/what-the-recast-weee-directive-means-for-the-uk/feed/ 2 http://www.it-green.co.uk/uk_business_recycling/what-the-recast-weee-directive-means-for-the-uk-page-2/ http://www.it-green.co.uk/uk_business_recycling/what-the-recast-weee-directive-means-for-the-uk-page-2/#comments Sat, 28 Jan 2012 08:00:05 +0000 Richard Tj http://www.it-green.co.uk/uk_business_recycling/?p=129 Continue reading →]]>

What the recast WEEE directive means for the UK (Page 2)

 
The flip side to all this is the re-use market, which to some extent has it’s merits and should not be ignored. It provides some aid to developing countries but has to a certain extent been seen through rose tinted spectacles by many. Exporting used computers, mobile phones and the associated electronics required to maintain and use them has it’s risks, not least of which has until a few years ago been the theft of personal data. There are the added risks associated with the recycling of these goods when they themselves become waste and this simply can’t be ignored. Given the volumes being shipped to Developing countries, with all good faith, there are currently only 2 recycling initiatives in place for the whole of Africa, and both of these are woefully inadequate, lacking any signficant infrastructure.
 

 
However, the recast WEEE directive makes clear that the onus will now be on the exporter to prove that the waste is not waste but re-usable equipment. This clampdown on what has become known as “illegal export” (and was clarified as such by the EU parliament as such) will give border agencies far more power in the fight against this trade.
 

 
Whether the UK decides to implement the recast WEEE directive in the form designed by the EU, or decides to modify it to suit the UK’s current waste streams is pretty much anyone’s guess, but there’s a possibility that the current permitting (waste management licensing) system will see some reform, with the existing “Exemption” which permits the repair and refurbishment of WEEE being redrafted so that it falls outside of the WEEE system all together. This in itself would bring the UK’s permitting system in line with the recast WEEE directive. However, without increased reprocessing rates, it will result in the British Isles seeing a drop in per capita recycling rates every year as the waste electronics put back into use won’t count towards the final figures. On the flip side, only positive results will come from this reform as it will ultimately result in a tightening up of this difficult to manage waste stream, with waste ending up where it should.

WEEE directive revised in 2012

The European Parliament has passed new legislation on recycling electrical and electronic goods (Jan 2012).
 

New rules on the disposal of waste electrical and electronic equipment have been introduced by the European Parliament, which effectively aim at preventing the export of the waste under the guise of re-useable equipment. The reasoning behind this is that member states inadvertantly allow significant volumes of Silver, Platinum, Palladium and Gold to leave the Union, resulting in significant financial losses. New legilsation is aimed at tightening the export, ensuring that recovery, rather than re-use is employed and ultimately, to ensure the correct and proper recovery of the waste in safe, controlled working environments. It is hoped that the revised legisation will prevent the unnecessary export of the toxic materials associated with this waste, preventing pollution in Countries unable to deal with the by-products associated with WEEE.
 

Under the legislation, from 2016, European Union member states will have to collect 45 per cent of e-waste from electrical and electronic goods put on sale. This will rise to 65 per cent by 2019^(Ref), with officials noting around only one-third is currently treated appropriately.
 

Rapporteur Karl-Heinz Florenz of Germany, a member of the European People’s Party, commented: “Europe will now recover more raw materials, which is excellent news both for the economy and for the environment.” He added that negotiations were “difficult”, but he is “very satisfied” by the agreed collection rates.
 

 
A recent study compiled by the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) revealed the amount of e-waste effectively being recycled in the UK is on the rise.

Hard Drive Destruction- removing all the DATA

Most people assume that if you delete a file from your computer’s memory and then empty the ‘wastebasket’ that is on your desktop (and maybe run a ‘disk clean-up’ for good measure), the file is gone for good.
Not so. In fact, when you ‘delete’ a file from your PC, what you are doing is not erasing the file itself, but simply the reference to it on the hard disk.
 

The file itself is still there (until it is written over) and can be recovered with the right software. ‘It’s akin to ripping the index out of the front of a book. The actual pages, with all the original information and text are still there,’ .
 

The ‘deleted’ files can be recovered easily using proprietary file recovery software. Even erasing the whole operating system (eg Windows) still leaves the files intact- and recoverable simply by booting off an install CD.
 

You can go a step further: delete the files you want to erase, empty the recycle bin, download a huge file which fills the disk and overwrites the space taken up by the old files – and then delete that. But even then, when your old files have been overwritten with new files, ‘ghosts’ of the old data may remain on the hard drive (this in itself is making it a little harder for criminals to recover your data).
 

Computer disks use a magnetic medium to store information and, like magnetic tape, completely erasing all traces of what was on it is almost impossible.
 

Military-spec Hard disk Drive destruction machines exist: these overwrite the old files five to eight times (more than 8 wipes is pointless…) in an attempt to obliterate all traces of what was on the disk. But even then there remains the possibility that really determined hackers could gain access to snippets of surviving information.
 

How can you make sure this does not happen? There are special programs out there which claim to completely destroy files. But if you want to be really sure, you will have to resort to physical brute force and mechanically destroy the drive.
 

Even this is surprisingly difficult. Hard disks are robust devices, with a chassis made from cast aluminium and stainless steel covers, and though it is easy to destroy the sensitive electronics and the stylus mechanism, the disk itself is quite hard to destroy completely, given that it’s usually made from aluminium alloy or toughened safety glass. The US Pentagon suggests putting the whole thing in a metal-mulcher, which of course we advocate and actively pursue via the use of our 6 tonne hydraulic hard drive shredder. ]]> http://www.it-green.co.uk/uk_business_recycling/hard-drive-destruction-removing-all-the-data/feed/ 1