3C Waste Ltd v Mersey Waste Holdings Ltd & Anor. Country/Territory United Kingdom Type of court Others Date Oct 24, 2006 Source UNEP, InforMEA Court name High Court of Justice Seat of court London Judge David Steel Reference number [2006] EWHC 2598 (Comm) Language English Subject Waste & hazardous substances Keyword Solid waste Food waste Organic waste Waste disposal Waste domestic sources Waste management Waste non-domestic sources Transport/storage Abstract 3C as landfill operator was subject to a long-term contract under which it was obliged to accept waste in its landfill from Mersey Waste. It said the contract was loss-making. On traditional contractual principles, that was neither here nor there, and 3C was bound to perform its side of the contract. However, Article 10 of the Landfill Directive 1999/31/EC required Member States to ensure that all the costs of setting up and running a landfill were covered by the price to be charged for disposal of the waste. The idea behind this was to prevent under-capitalised operations from failing to meet the substantive standards of the directive. Article 10 was duly transposed domestically via Regulation 11 of the Landfill Regulations. Although the price for waste disposal had been set by a contract pre-dating Landfill Directive, 3C claimed it is illegal for it to charge Mersey Waste less than the full cost. The High Court has ruled that the landfilling of waste at less than its full cost of disposal is illegal under the Landfill Directive. This may render invalid any existing contracts for the cheap disposal of waste. Article 10 of Council Directive (EC) 1999/31 (the Landfill Directive) imposed an obligation on member states to ensure that existing contracts (ie contracts entered into before the implementation date of the directive) were only performed at a price which met, as a minimum, the full cost within the meaning of that article. That meant that in the circumstances of the instant case, under a force majeure clause contained in a contract entered into in 1986, that contract was suspended on the assumption that the price which it set for disposing of waste in a landfill was below full cost. Full text COU-156429.pdf