February 2005:
Hazardous Waste Regulations reported to be putting Welsh Contractors at a Disadvantage
Welsh hauliers are losing out on brownfield remediation haulage opportunities due to the lack of any of the landfills in Wales, which were previously operated as co-disposal sites, opening new mono-disposal facilities, as required under the new EU based regulations.
Apart from the much higher hazardous waste disposal charges charged for this type of material, which since last July has risen from less than £30/t to between £100/t & £120/t, which is no doubt preventing many site cleanups going ahead, firms in England are seen as holding an advantage. This is especially when there may be commercial links between hauliers and the locally based landfill operator.
The nearest hazardous waste landfill to Wales may now be more than one hundred kilometres distant, in the Swindon area, and some contractors are thought to be trucking the waste to a Teesside landfill.
The irony is that transporting wastes this far is contrary to another EU and UK waste disposal rule called the “proximity principle”. Very sensibly there are supposed to be policy measures in place for the avoidance of long distance transport of waste. It clearly makes no sense from a traffic and sustainability point of view that this is happening.
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