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Standards

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Andrew Marlow studies the waste review and the use of standards as enforcement alternatives

T

here is a developing opportunity for the waste management sector to work with the Government and others to use standards and accreditation within a proposal that they could be given a “larger role” in waste enforcement to reduce the regulatory burden in an already heavily regulated sector. The proposal was being explored as part of the Government’s review of England’s waste policy and was reinforced by a letter jointly sent by the Waste and Recycling Minister, Lord Henley and Business Minister, Mark Prisk. The recognition of alternative means

to achieve effective regulation of waste management through the use of standards, accreditation and certification has been a long time coming, and the aim in this article is to provide a background to the developments within the waste management sector, government and the regulators, and provide information for an informed debate on how waste policy could be shaped for the next decade.

Figure 1: suggested model for a balanced regulatory and voluntary oversight

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Past Regulatory Regimes It is important to reflect on the many changes that have that have shaped our sector over the past few decades, and to detect opportunities for future developments and enhancements. In that time the waste management sector has seen some substantial changes with movement away from “command and control” legislation from both government and regulators to market and fiscal mechanisms, such as Landfill Tax and Producer Responsibility. At the same time, there has been significant

strategy consolidation within the marketplace. Similarly the regulators, such as the Environment Agency, have responded to these changes and have developed risk-based inspection and enforcement strategies. These approaches represent significant progress from the inspection targets delivered under the guidance adopted by the former Waste Regulation Authorities in the period prior to them becoming absorbed into the Environment Agency. Some of these changes can clearly be seen through one of the themes of England’s current waste policy (The Waste Strategy for England 2007) covering effective regulation with the recognition that regulation had, in the past, often not been sufficiently risk-based or targeted and, in some cases, had been over-prescriptive. The intention of the strategic theme was that waste regulation would play a proportionate and cost-effective role in encouraging resource efficiency by business, and in ensuring sound environmental and public health protection. In many respects the initiatives promoted in the Strategy, such as the use of protocols to clarify when a waste ceases to be a waste and the reforms of the environmental permitting and exemption systems, have been implemented and have been successful in moving the aims of the strategy forward.

Standards In The Sector The most widely used standards tend to relate to Quality Management Systems (ISO 9001:2008) and Environmental Management Systems (ISO 14001:2004, or the EMAS Regulation No. 1221/2009). These management system standards are extensively used in the waste sector and beyond to demonstrate that the organisation has established and maintained clear and robust processes for managing customer satisfaction, environmental impacts and demonstrating legal compliance. Indeed, the operation of an environmental management system (EMS) is specifically recognised in the Environment Agency’s OPRA (Operational Risk Appraisal) scheme for waste facilities. Other standards relevant to the sector, such as PAS 402: Waste Resource Management – Specification for Performance Reporting, and PAS 103: Collected Waste Plastics Packaging For Recycling, have been developed to demonstrate effective management of specific activities within the sector. Further examples of standards relevant to the waste management sector can be found in Table 1. An even more important development can be seen in the use of standards and their impact on the regulatory regime for the Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2010. The Regulations specify that all operators requiring an environmental permit must demonstrate technically competent management of their regulated facilities. In the past, this competence would have been demonstrated by individuals holding a Certificate of Technical Competence (COTC) through the approved scheme operated by WAMITAB. There will in the future, however, be two choices of competence schemes. Either the flexible, individual schemes through the aforementioned WAMITAB (with CIWM), which is available now; or the Competence Management System 8 (CMS), currently still under development, by Energy

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strategy & Utility Skills and the Environmental Services Association, where the demonstration of competence is managed at an organisational level and independently audited by an accredited certification body. The development of a CMS, together with the existing use of ISO 14001:2004, is a further indication that the waste management sector is making serious use of standards to not only demonstrate legal compliance to the environmental agencies, but also to enhance their organisational management and performance. The little-publicised pan-European Remas project provides clear evidence of the benefits that can be derived from the use of standards.1 The project, led by the Environment Agency in partnership with the Scottish Environment Protection Agency, Ireland’s Environmental Protection Agency and the Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment, was a three-year study examining environmental management systems (EMS) and their benefits to improved environmental performance and regulatory compliance. From the final results of businesses and industries throughout European Union member states, the study demonstrated strong evidence that organisations operating an accredited certified EMS showed improved on-site environmental management activities. This and other results from the Remas project provide evidence to support the conclusion that voluntary standards,

such as ISO 14001:2004, could be a more cost-effective alternative to traditional regulatory mechanisms. Indeed, it could be argued that regulatory mechanisms are seldom subject to the same level of scrutiny.

The Challenges Ahead The case for the advantages of using standards and accredited certification within the waste management sector, as an opportunity to reduce the regulatory burden, is a strong one. However, there are challenges ahead in the development of greater use of a voluntary oversight system, based on standards and accredited certification. A suggested model for understanding these challenges is given in Figure 1 with the main aspect indicating the mutual harmony of each of the actors (regulatory oversight and voluntary oversight) with their corresponding drivers (standards and regulations). The other smaller aspects show the two main sources of tensions in the model, which lie in the development of standards that meet the needs of effective regulator oversight and lead to a mutual respect of the roles of the regulatory and voluntary oversight, so that the regulatory burden can be reduced; and in achieving the balance between retaining specific aspects of the regulatory systems, such as recycling targets or pollution parameters, particularly those implemented from

BS EN ISO 14001:2004

Environmental management systems: Requirements with guidance for use

BS ISO 14004:2004

Environmental management systems: General guidelines on principles, systems and supporting techniques

PAS 402:2009

Waste resource management: Specification for performance reporting

PAS 103

Collected waste plastics packaging for recycling

BS EN 13965-2:2010

Characterisation of waste: Terminology – Managementrelated terms and definitions

BS EN 12920:2006+A1:2008

Characterisation of waste: Methodology for the determination of the leaching behaviour of waste under specified conditions

BS EN 14803:2006

Identification and/or determination of the quantity of waste

BS 5906:2005

Waste management in buildings: Code of practice

BS EN 13193:2000

Packaging and the environment: Terminology

BS 1703:2005

Refuse chutes and hoppers. Specification

BS EN 840-1:2004

Mobile waste containers: Containers with 2 wheels with a capacity up to 400-litres for comb-lifting devices, dimensions and design

BS EN 15347:2007

Recycled Plastics: Characterisation of plastics waste

Table 1: examples of international and British standards relevant to wastes management

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EU directives and aspects that can be incorporated into standards and managed through a voluntary oversight. These main challenges, and others, will need to be resolved through the work of the British Standards Institution, which has been tasked by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills to develop a “strategic roadmap” on standards. Other organisations, such as the United Kingdom Accreditation Service – as the regulatory body for accredited certification bodies and the certification sector – together with the waste management sector and regulators should also contribute their opinions in this development to ensure that it fully meets the needs of an effective environmental outcome for society as a whole. The potential direction of future waste policy could involve a greater use of standards and accredited certification, but only through greater understanding of the benefits and the mutual collaboration of all interested parties. There is a clear role for the CIWM and its members to play in influencing the policy direction and contributing their technical expertise to the development of waste management based on standards as a cost-effective, complementary mechanism to the traditional regulatory, market and financial initiatives. Indeed, as this article was being finalised, it has become clear that the Environment Agency (EA), BIS and Defra are working together on a pilot project, EMS+, to use ISO 14001:2004 third-party audits to assess a site against a compliance protocol being developed by the EA.2 The real challenge lies ahead, but we should not lose sight of this golden opportunity to use standards and accredited certification as a catalyst to drive the shape of waste management and regulation for this and future generations. CIWM

References 1 http://remas.iema.net/ 2 www.environmentalistonline.com, 2011 Andrew Marlow is director of an environmental consultancy, onePlanet Solutions Limited