GUILDFORD PARTY'S MOTION ON HAZARDOUS WASTE GIVEN UNANIMOUS ENDORSEMENT AT LIB DEM CONFERENCE

12.00.00am UTC (GMT +0000) Tue 21st Sep 2004

Doughty: Proposed hazardous waste motion

Guildford MP, Sue Doughty, today proposed an important motion from the main platform at the Liberal Democrat Annual Conference in Bournemouth.

She criticized the government for leaving the country with a massive shortfall of treatment and disposal capacity for hazardous waste, which will lead to an increase in fly-tipping with serious threats to the environment and human health.

Sue said:

"The government had five years to prepare for a ban on the environmentally damaging practice of mixing non-hazardous and hazardous waste together in the same landfill. They needed to work with industry to ensure enough new specialist treatment and disposal sites were available when the ban started this July. But when the day arrived, the number of sites that could take hazardous waste fell from over 200 to just 11.

"They have created an ideal situation for black market economy that will see cowboy contractors taking hazardous waste away on the cheap and dumping it wherever they can get away with it.

"These changes were meant to divert hazardous waste to more environmentally sustainable treatment facilities. The facilities are not there, so instead we will see the waste diverted from landfill to lay-by."

With most of the remaining permitted sites being in the North, the South East is region has a particular shortage. In 2002 the South East produced around 580,000 tonnes of hazardous waste, but currently only has capacity to deal with 111,000, leaving a shortfall of about 80%.

Sue said:

"Despite the shortage of facilities, waste site operators have told us they are surprised to be receiving lower amounts of hazardous waste than they expected. This is fuelling the speculation that rather than paying for it to be trucked across the country, producers are resorting to stockpiling, or it is being disposed of illegally."