The European Union will now refrain from exporting hazardous wastes to developing countries
IN A recent positive step, the European
Union (EU) passed a regulation banning
the export of hazardous wastes to
developing countries for recovery purposes, to be effective from the beginning of next year. This regulation is
designed to align EU legislation with
Decision II /12 that was adopted as an
amendment to the Basel Convention on
Transboundary Movement of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal in
September 1995. The convention
imposes an immediate prohibition on
the export of hazardous wastes that are
intended for disposal to non-OECD
(Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development) countries,
and a ban, as of January 1, 1998, on the
export of hazardous wastes intended for
recovery, recycling and reclamation
towards non-OECD countries.
At a more international level, however, for the amendment to the Basel Convention to come into force, three-fourths of the parties (approximately 65 states) who have adopted it, must
ratify it. Today, a year and a half later,
Finland is the sole country to have done
so. "We thought it was important that
we had our legislation in place for it to
be fully effective, since on our own, with
15 states, we cannot make the amendment enter into force anyway, says
Yvon Slingenberg, of the Waste
Management Policy Division of the
European Commission.
But what exactly is covered under
the term 'hazardous waste'? The EU'S
legislation applies to its own definition
of hazardous waste that classifies it into
three tiers - the green, the amber and
the red. As Slingenberg points out, "The
notion of hazardous waste according to
this legislation has been translated as
being the amber and red lists. We are
well aware that there may be an overlap
between our green list and the Basel
Convention's definition of hazardous
waste but we need to have a final decision about that before we can make the
necessary adaptations."
Currently, the most widely
used form of waste disposal in
the EU is incineration and where
the member states still have the
space, it is landfills. Metals and
heavy metals are recycled to a
larger extent and there is also a
growing emphasis on recovery,
normally limited to non-hazardous waste. As far as incineration is concerned the standards are high and regulated in keeping with an EU directive on the
incineration of hazardous waste.
As for landfills, there is no community legislation at present.
What does this regulation
bode for the developing world
like India, where the recycling
industry constitutes a large and
lucrative sector? There is still
one loophole that can be exploited - Article 11 of the
Basel Convention which allows
"Parties to enter into bilateral,
multilateral or regional agreements or
arrangements regarding transboundary
movement of hazardous wastes or other
wastes with other Parties or non-Parties
provided that such agreements or
arrangements do not derogate from the
environmentally sound management of
hazardous wastes and other wastes."
Is the possibility of having bilateral agreements with the EU as an exception to the export ban, a viable one in the face of this
legislation? "In community legislation,
we do not foresee this possibility at all,"
states Slingenberg. "How other Parties
interpret this is up to them, but this is our
interpretation," she concludes.
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