News
Hazardous waste needs to be better handled says Mayor
1st February 2007
The Mayor of London today (1st February) revealed that each year the equivalent of up to 1500 waste collection vehicles filled with hazardous waste from households, such as pesticides, chemicals and paint are being dumped in landfill sites or incinerated in London.
This situation is happening because London Boroughs are either not providing adequate services or not suitably advertising the services they do provide. The Mayor of London is calling for an amendment to the Greater London Authority (GLA) Bill to create a Single Waste Disposal Authority for the capital. If there were a Single Waste Disposal Authority there would be one co-ordinated system for disposing of waste in the capital, there would be more sites accepting hazardous waste and existing services would be improved and better advertised. For waste that cannot be recycled, the Mayor favours the use of new technologies, which can extract both energy and heat from waste and which pre-treat waste. This would mean that any hazardous waste, which ends up in household rubbish collections would be identified and disposed of safely.
According to a study by Imperial College London, each year up to 10,500 tonnes of hazardous waste is produced in the capitals households, yet in 2005 only 200 tonnes of this dangerous waste was collected by the capital’s main collection service and properly disposed of in specialist controlled incinerators or specialist landfill sites. The Mayor argues that this is because the council services are badly advertised, there are only two vehicles across the capital collecting this type of rubbish and only five sites that accept all of this waste for London’s 7.4 million residents. Consequently, it is estimated that around 10,000 tonnes of household hazardous waste is being mixed in with normal household waste collections or liquids such as chemicals are being poured down the drain.
Mayor of London Ken Livingstone said: ‘There is no doubt that London’s waste management system is lagging behind the rest of Britain and Europe, yet the Environment Department is unwilling to make the changes we need. Twenty-one years ago, the House of Lords in their wisdom voted against the then Government's proposals for waste management. In the debate Lord Gregson called for a single authority to ensure that hazardous waste is properly disposed of. We now need reassurance from the Government that they will rethink on a Single Waste Disposal Authority to ensure London’s hazardous waste is safely handled.’
During a House of Lords debate in 1985 on an amendment to the Local Government Bill to create a single waste authority, Lord Gregson warned of the perils of attempting to manage hazardous waste without a single authority. Referring to the 1981 Select Committee into voluntary arrangements to disposing hazardous waste, he said: ‘They consider that voluntary arrangements have no serious prospect of survival or even of providing the proper degree of control which hazardous waste disposal requires. They therefore recommend that the Bill be amended to provide that single authorities should be established.
‘…The control and monitoring of hazardous waste therefore calls for a highly qualified multi-disciplined staff. This requirement is further compounded in this country because the great bulk of liquid hazardous waste is co-disposed with domestic waste on the principle of dilute and disperse.
‘…Given this emotive subject, with public confidence at stake and with the potential for the most horrendous disasters, I cannot understand why the Government should be so irresponsible as to risk this crucial service descending us into a shambles. I say to the Government “You must not do it”’.
A recent change in legislation now means many everyday items such as fluorescent lighting tubes are classified as hazardous when they become rubbish and local authorities have a responsibility to manage hazardous waste they collect in a safe manner and only transfer it to an authorised person. These changes mean that the amount of hazardous waste we produce will continue to grow and London will need more and better hazardous waste collection services and treatment facilities to cope with this.
Source:GLA
