National Threat Assessment 2008. Organised Crime - Politie

• electronic and electrical appliances (E-waste);
• scrap vehicles;
• mixed hazardous substances.
E-waste includes all electrical and electronic waste, such as fridges, washing
machines, razors and mp3 players.
Scrap vehicles are vehicles that no longer meet the Dutch MOT requirements
and have been deregistered with the Road Transport Agency. These scrap
vehicles can often still be used in countries where vehicles are not subject
to any or only a few technical requirements.
The term mixed hazardous substances includes different types of substances,
such as heavy metals, polychlorobiphenyl compounds (PCBs) or agricultural
chemicals. Studying and describing these substances as a single generic waste
stream proved to be difficult. Where possible, the research focuses on mixed
hazardous waste materials.
3.5.2 General context
In industrialised countries environmental policy and regulations have become
more and more strict in recent decades. It became more and more timeconsuming
and expensive for companies to dispose of hazardous waste.
As a result, increasing amounts of waste were shipped to countries with more
lenient rules: developing countries and former Eastern Bloc countries. Major
environmental incidents have drawn attention to the need for international
waste processing agreements. For example, after the chemical disaster in 1976
near the Italian town of Seveso, Seveso soil contaminated with dioxin turned
up in many different places all over the world. In 1989 international agreements
about controlling the cross-border shipment of hazardous substances and their
disposal were laid down in the Basel Convention. These agreements were
followed up in 1994 by EU Regulation 259/93 on the shipment of waste.
On 12 July 2007 this ‘old’ Regulation was replaced by a new Regulation
(no. 1013/2006).
The current EU Regulation provides for a system of supervision and inspection
of the shipment of waste to other countries. Whether a waste material may
be shipped and according to which procedure, depends on:
1. the nature of the waste: hazardous or non-hazardous;
2. the intended processing method: useful application or disposal and;
3. the destination country: a country with which a special treaty is in place
or a country with which there is no special treaty.
120 National Threat Assessment 2008 – Organised crime