IIIEE Reports 2008:2 Waste management policies and policy instruments in Europe An overview Naoko Tojo International Institute for Industrial Environmental Economics at Lund University, Sweden Alexander Neubauer and Ingo Bräuer Ecologic - Institute for International and European Environmental Policy, Germany Report written as part of project HOLIWAST: Holistic Assessment of Waste Management Technologies © You may use the contents of the IIIEE publications for informational purposes only. You may not copy, lend, hire, transmit or redistribute these materials for commercial purposes or for compensation of any kind without written permission from IIIEE. When using this material you must include the following copyright notice for the authors to the respective parts of the report:: Copyright © Naoko Tojo, IIIEE, Lund University and Alexander Neubauer and Ingo Bräuer. Ecologic - Institute for International and European Environmental Policy, Germany . All rights reserved in any copy that you make in a clearly visible position. You may not modify the materials without the permission of the author. Published in 2006 by IIIEE, Lund University, P.O. Box 196, S-221 00 LUND, Sweden, Tel: +46 46 222 02 00, Fax: +46 46 222 02 10, e-mail: [email protected]. ISSN 1650-1675 Research European Commission PRIORITY [policy-oriented research priority SSP/8.1] SPECIFIC TARGETED RESEARCH OR INNOVATION PROJECT HOLIWAST Holistic assessment of waste management technologies. Contract number: 006509 Deliverable n° 1-1 Title: Waste Management Policy and Policy Instruments in Europe an overview Start date of project: 1st August 2005 Duration: 2 years Organisation name of lead contractor for this deliverable: International Institute for Industrial Environmental Economics (IIIEE) at Lund University, Sweden Project co-funded by the European Commission within the Sixth Framework Programme (2002- 2006) Dissemination Level PU Public PP Restricted to other programme participants (including the Commission Services) RE Restricted to a group specified by the consortium (including the Commission Services) CO Confidential, only for members of the consortium (including the Commission Services) Project home page: http://holiwast.brgm.fr Tojo, Neubauer and Bräuer Preface This report constitutes a part of the Work Package one of the two-year (2005-07) research project entitled Holistic Assessment of Waste Management Technologies (HOLIWAST), funded by the European Commission. The HOLIWAST project is a collaborative effort of partners in seven Member States (Austria, Germany, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Poland and Sweden). Among them, the authors of this report are Naoko Tojo at the International Institute for the International Environmental Economics at Lund University in Sweden (Chapter 1, 2, 3, 5 and 6), and Alexander Neubauer and Ingo Bräuer. Ecologic - Institute for International and European Environmental Policy, Germany (Chapter 4). The report was originally submitted to the European Commission as a project report in 2006 and was subsequently modified. The authors would wish to thank the European Commission for providing funding as well as comments to the report. Gratitude is also directed to the partners of the projects for their valuable inputs. The full responsibility for the content of the report remains, however, with the authors. HOLIWAST WP 1: Waste management policies and policy instruments in Europe Executive Summary This report constitutes a part of the Work Package 1 of the two-year research project entitled Holistic Assessment of Waste Management Technologies (HOLIWAST), funded by the European Commission. The HOLIWAST project is a collaborative effort of partners in seven Member States (A, D, DK, F, I, PL and S). Among them, the authors of this report are the partners in Sweden (Chapter 1, 2, 3, 5 and 6) and Germany (Chapter 4). The HOLIWAST project was launched with the following primary objectives: To provide a multidisciplinary (environmental, economic, social) comparison of different waste management technologies. To identify how the most appropriate technologies can be implemented within an integrated waste management framework, for different socio-economic context. To evaluate the opportunity of policy instruments for promoting these technologies and support decision makers in waste management. Work Package 1 of the project has the overall objective of providing insights into the environmental effectiveness of policy instruments related to waste management applied in selected socio-economic contexts. The study presented in this report is the first step to fulfil this task. The purpose of this report is to provide an overview of municipal solid waste management policies of the European Union and highlight the potential of selected existing policy instruments in reducing environmental impacts related to municipal waste generated in Europe, focusing on their implication to local governments. In doing so, it aims to facilitate the evaluation of policy instruments implemented and/ or discussed in the three case communities examined in the HOLIWAST project Torino, Italy, Katowice, Poland and Tølløse, Denmark and their effectiveness in decreasing the environmental impacts relating to waste. Among various waste streams, the scope of the HOLIWAST project is limited to municipal waste. Within the municipal waste, the following waste is covered under the project: mixed waste, mixed secondary materials, plastics, metal, glass, paper, composite packaging, biodegradable waste, garden & park waste, manually collected road waste, market waste, textile, batteries, fluorescent tubes, small waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) and oil and fat. Reflecting upon the aforementioned scope of the project, the report provides a summary of selected EU legislation, focusing on the parts related to local governments. Concerning the policy instruments, they are divided into administrative, economic and informative instruments. The general characteristics and effectiveness of the selected instruments are concisely described, using concrete examples. The examples are employed to illustrate the content of the instruments as well as what an instrument can manage to achieve in a given context. They are by no means exhaustive lists of all the existing cases. The study is based primarily on the review of existing literature (reports, legislation, books, academic articles, newsletters), complemented by limited number of interviews. Following the introductory chapter, Chapter 2 provides an overview of relevant EU laws and policies on waste. Chapter 3, 4 and 5 describes selected administrative instruments, economic instruments and informative instruments. The report ends with a concise concluding section (Chapter 6). I Tojo, Neubauer and Bräuer Legal and policy framework for waste management in Europe The following EU legislation on waste, their subsequent amendments and (proposal for) revisions are reviewed, together with the thematic strategy on the prevention and recycling of waste. Directive 2006/12/EC on waste. Directive 91/689/EEC on hazardous waste. Regulation No 1013/ 2006/ EEC on the supervision and control of shipments of waste within, into and out of the European Community. Directive 1999/31/EC on the landfill of waste. Directive 2000/76/EC on the incineration of waste. Directive 96/61/EC concerning integrated pollution prevention and control. Directive 94/62/EC on packaging and packaging waste. Directive 2006/ 66/ EC on batteries and accumulators and waste batteries and accumulators and repealing Directive 91/157/EEC. Directive 2002/96/EC on waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE). As of spring 2007, the EU policies on waste are in transition. A new framework directive that replaces the existing framework directive has been proposed. In addition to some of the structural changes, some issues governing all waste policies in the EU such as the distinction between waste and recovered materials, waste for recovery versus waste for disposal are addressed in the proposal. The outcome will have implications to, among others, the movement of waste/ material streams within and across the national boarder and the use of incineration with energy recovery. Some of the EU legislation, especially those governing specific waste streams, contains within them many policy instruments and serves as examples of these policy instruments. Some of them, such as material restriction, set the same standards for all the Member States, while the fulfilment of requirements such as minimum collection/ reuse/ recycling targets is partially left in the hands of Member States. The WEEE Directive and the Directive on batteries and accumulators are based on the concept of EPR (extended producer responsibility). Implementation of the packaging directive in the majority of the old-15 Member States has also been based on EPR. Meanwhile, the implementation in practice often retains the collection responsibility in the hands of municipalities. Local governments seem to want to keep control over the municipal waste collection system for various reasons. The optimal solution may differ depending on the socio-economic context. What will remain in the waste stream handled by the municipalities have implication to the technological solutions they should select. Review of policy instruments In total of 18 policy instruments categorised into administrative, economic and informative are reviewed. The discussions of the respective instruments include the general characteristics of the instrument and