The Campaign for Real Recycling (CRR) has had its application for a judicial review of Defra’s interpretation of the revised Waste Framework Directive (rWFD) granted. A High Court judge in Cardiff has agreed to hear the case, Resource has learned.

The CRR, which represents reprocessors and recyclers calling for source separation, asked for the judicial review as it contends that Defra’s inclusion of commingling in its proposed transposition ‘is contrary to both the wording and the spirit of the rWFD’. Article 11 of the document says that by 2015, ‘separate collection shall be set up for at least the following: paper, metal, plastic and glass’.

In an interview in this magazine, Karolina Fras, in charge of overseeing implementation of European Commission (EC) waste directives, notes that contention over the rWFD’s meaning is ‘a very UK-specific issue’ as most member states already practice source separation. This August, the EC published another document that could lead to the development of another ‘UK-specific issue’: the proposed end-of-waste criteria for paper.

According to the EC, the end-of-waste criteria, which augment the rWFD by setting out quality specifications for key recyclables ‘specify when certain waste ceases to be waste and obtains a status of a product (or a secondary raw material)’. The commission’s working paper notes that for paper to be upgraded from waste to product, ‘The non-paper component content shall be ?1.5% of air dried weight’. Such a small contamination level would mean the paper would indeed be of suitable quality to be a feedstock for UK (and foreign) paper mills.

However, the EC’s proposed criteria also set out a ‘self-monitoring’ enforcement regime, whereby a materials recovery facility (MRF) certifies its own product as end-of-waste, by carrying out a ‘visual inspection of each consignment’. Producers are required to document their ‘self-monitoring’ and have the records, if not the actual material, available for inspection by the ‘competent authority’ – the Environment Agency (EA) in the case of England and Wales – but the procedure effectively cuts the EA out of the loop.

The CRR claims the proposed regulations could result in UK waste management companies legitimising export of contaminated or low-grade paper to Asia and will severely weaken what it claims is already an ineffective inspection and enforcement system.

Mal Williams, Chair of the CRR, said: “The proposed legislation is far too weak. The inspection of shipments sent for export is already far too seldom and ineffective in the extreme and the government is fully aware of that, so to leave an already discredited and desperate exporting industry to self-certify is nothing short of culpable negligence. MRFs in the UK cannot produce the standard of paper required for legal export and are currently flouting the regulations with seemed impunity – to further weaken the inspection regime cannot be condoned.

“We need this high-quality paper in this country for our own reprocessing industry, but the current quality being presented at the gates of UK mills is generally so substandard that this illegal export route is currently the only one available if the collectors are not to receive a glut of ‘waste’ to deal with.

“We urge Defra and key industry stakeholders (that must include the paper buyers in the UK) to develop a system of robust transparency to ensure all paper declared end-of-waste can be independently verified.”

Confirmation of the criteria from the EC is expected later in the year when the regulations are published in the Official Journal of the European Union.