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

all the facts, a lower cost service than one on offer from a given local authority could
not be restrained from making such a choice. It would be difficult to argue that such
waste would remain ‘under the control of’ the local authority concerned where it is no
longer chosen as the collection contractor.
It can be seen that both the allocation mechanism and the way in which the
biodegradable content of landfilled waste is calculated are likely to lead to some
perverse strategies being developed, notwithstanding Defra’s move to try to head off
actions by local authorities intending to reduce the amount of commercial waste they
collect. It is doubtful whether Defra could really require local authorities to continue to
collect commercial waste from their existing customers, and a court judgement in the
case of WRWA v Wandsworth would tend to support this view. 1029 The additional risk
that this would imply in respect of maintaining a balance of allowances sufficient to
cover the quantity of BMW being landfilled could itself be argued as justifying an
increase in the price of the service being offered by the local authority. Since
competitors in the market for the provision of commercial waste collections in the
WDA area would not be faced with any such risk (the waste would not fall under the
definition ‘municipal’), then this would be tantamount to forcing customers to choose
a higher priced service, thereby restraining trade. 1030
Although one cannot be sure that changes in the rate of growth of municipal waste at
a national level are occurring at the expense of an increase in the rate of growth of
commercial waste (because the quality of data on commercial waste does not such
an analysis to be undertaken), the simple fact is that Eunomia is well aware that this
happening on a wide scale.
In addition to the above points, the reporting of data by local authorities clearly leaves
something to be desired. The Environment Agency noted that several local authorities
send material to be recycled to brokers, intermediaries and reprocessors. Sometimes
the waste is reprocessed and recovered in the UK and at other times it is exported.
The Agency noted that local authorities differ in their attention to detail when
reporting the final destination of municipal waste, yet this information is required in
order to demonstrate that reprocessing and recovery is legitimate and has diverted
waste from landfill. 1031
1029 In this judgement, Justice Evans-Lombe ruled that WRWA, which sought judicial review of a
decision made by Wandsworth BC to set charges for trade waste which effectively reduced the quantity
of waste collected by the authority, had no case for such a review. In other words, Wandsworth had not
acted outside the law in essentially seeking to reduce its collection of non-household municipal waste.
1030 Matters would, or course, have looked somewhat different had Defra taken the view that municipal
waste did in fact include all commercial waste in the WDA area, irrespective of who collected it. This
would have made the tasks of data acquisition and verification more difficult, but it would also have
led, potentially, to a more rational form of collection logistics rather than encouraging its
fragmentation. It might also have ensured a more enlightened approach to procurement of facilities in
which treatment facilities were designed to deal not only with the material collected by the WCAs /
WDAs, but also with the wider commercial wastes.
1031 Environment Agency (2008) Report on the Landfill Allowances and Trading Scheme 2007/08,
November 2008.
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