In the UK, waste materials that are disposed of to landfill are subject to Landfill Tax, in addition to the usual tipping fees. As wood is a biodegradable material, the current (1999) Landfill Tax charge is £10 per tonne.
Environmental Protection Act
The Environmental Protection Act (1990) specifies a ‘Duty of Care’ which is applicable to all producers of controlled waste, including construction and demolition wastes. This requires the disposer to observe a duty of care when disposing of waste or residual materials and involves three stages of action. The first is to secure the waste, the second is to check for legal removal, and the third is to provide/hand over a written description with the waste.
Those who use packaging materials are liable under the ‘Producer Responsibility (Packaging waste) Regulations’. These regulations are designed to promote the recycling and/or recovery of waste packaging materials and will apply to wood based packaging materials from the year 2000. They will apply to all companies with a turnover of >£2 m and producing 50 tonnes of packaging per annum and will specify the percentage of wood waste to be recovered or recycled, currently 32% and 7% respectively.
Regulations are laid down in European Union Directive 91/689/EEC regarding hazardous wastes (Deroubaix, 1998). These regulations specify that wastes containing concentrations of more than 3% of toxic substances or more than 0.1% of carcinogenic substances will be classified as ‘hazardous waste’ (Deroubaix, 1998). Wood waste, as an inert material, is currently classified as a ‘domestic and assimilated’ waste and not a hazardous waste (Deroubaix, 1998). However, changes in classification thresholds or the presence of high levels of contaminants may lead to the classification of some wood products as a hazardous material.
On a separate and perhaps more relevant note, the High Court has ruled that certain forms of recycling operations fall within legal definitions of waste recovery (Macrory, 1998). Based on EC Directives from 1975 and 1991, the 1995 Environment Act, and 1997 EC case law from the European Court of Justice the High Court gave the following ruling:
“Materials which are to be used (rather than finally disposed of) but which do not require any recovery operation before being put to their new use, are not treated as waste” (Macrory, 1998)
“Materials processed for re-use by recovery operations cease to be waste once the operation is complete” (Macrory, 1998).
Using sawmill residues as an example, this suggests the following:
Residues such as wood chips of a grade suitable for particle board manufacture or sawdust / shavings suitable for animal bedding and not requiring further processing are not wastes and are thereby residues
Slab-wood, off-cuts, rejects, etc. are wastes because they require further processing such as chipping and grading. However, when such processing is complete the processed material is no longer classified as a waste but as a residue or secondary raw material.
This latter point would also apply to the majority of construction and demolition residues and also to the majority of end of life products eg pallets, packaging, furniture, etc. While bearing in mind the issues raised above, for the purposes of this report all ‘left over’ or ‘end of life’ wood material will, from this point on, be referred to as wood residues.
