International Review of Waste Management Policy - Department of ...

has encouraged innovation in recycling techniques, improving the product range of
recycled aggregates.
Each year a fixed sum of £35 million is diverted to the Aggregate Levy Sustainability
Fund (ALSF). This is out of a total revenue of €454, which as reported by the EEA
(2008). The ALSF has, amongst other things, funded research by the Waste and
Resources Action Plan (WRAP), which led to the establishment of an aggregates
forum. Achievements to date are as follows:
661
� improved quality standards for aggregate that is recycled from waste. WRAP
developed the Waste Quality Protocol which has significantly lowered barriers,
such as stigma, attached to using aggregates derived from waste materials
and encouraged the expansion of demand for secondary aggregates and other
substitute recycled materials;
� raising awareness and increasing end user confidence by organising seminars
to encourage local authorities to use recycled aggregate materials in local
infrastructure projects;
� providing cheap access to capital for reprocessing infrastructure to increase
quality of supply of substitute aggregates from recycled materials;
� delivering accessible robust information, e.g. Aggregain web-based information
service (www.aggregain.org.uk ), which has over 260 registered users.
46.8 Social and Distributional Consequences
46.8.1 Social Consequences
Anecdotally, a rise in the cost of aggregate due to a tax could affect first-time buyers
looking to buy new builds, where the increased cost in aggregate is reflected in the
sale price of the property. Those with lower incomes are thought to be far less
affected because they are more likely to be renting property or in social housing.
It is possible that the implementation of the tax could disproportionately affect
smaller companies, which in the worst case could lead to closures. This will result in a
more sparsely populated network of quarries and distributional consequences
relating to the distance from the quarry due to the high transportation costs and
environmental impacts associated with aggregate transportation. 798
In Sweden when the tax was first implemented in 1996 it was kept low so as to
reduce economic pressure on smaller gravel pits. There was initially some concern
that a higher level of tax would cause closure of small pits which contained gravel
reserves that had not been fully exploited. As such the effect of the tax was thought to
provide both and informative and incentive effect. However, in 2003 the tax was
raised in order to further strengthen the incentive for material substitution 799.
798 British Aggregates Association (2002) Briefing Note on the Quarrying Industry and the Aggregates
Levy, Accessed 5 th January 2009, http://www.british-aggregates.co.uk/documentation/doc13.pdf
799 P. Soderholm (2006) Environmental Taxation in the Natural Resource Extraction Sector: Is it is good
idea? European Environment 16, 232 – 245.
International Review of Waste Policy: Annexes