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Solvent Resource Management Ltd (Claimants) -and- The Environment Agency (Defendant); OSS Group Ltd (Claimants) - and - The Environment Agency (Defendant)

País/Territorio
Reino Unido
Tipo de la corte
Otros
Fecha
Nov 30, 2006
Fuente
UNEP, InforMEA
Nombre del tribunal
High Court of Justice
Sede de la corte
London
Juez
Burton
Número de referencia
[2006] EWHC 3023 (Admin)
Idioma
Inglés
Materia
Desechos y sustancias peligrosas
Palabra clave
Negocios/industria/corporaciones Gestión de desechos Reciclado/reutilización Hidrocarburos Procesamiento/manipulación
Resumen
These have been two judicial review applications heard together, brought against the Environment Agency. In both applications there arose a common issue, namely in what circumstances does material, which has become waste or derives from waste, cease to be waste if it is to be burnt as fuel: and, in particular, whether it can cease to be waste when a prior process is carried out for the purpose of rendering it safe to be burnt as fuel, or whether it only so ceases when it is so burnt. This question was of very considerable financial and practical significance, because, so long as material is waste, it is subject to stringent controls in respect of handling, transport, storage, disposal and, in particular, incineration, as a result of a series of European Directives, and consequent implementing Regulations, derived from Article 174 of the EC Treaty. The High Court of Justice therefore had to analyze the question of what it was that constituted “end of waste”. The first claimant was engaged in the ‘laundering’ of solvents. Their principal business was the recovery and recycling of industrial waste materials, in particular the recovery of waste solvent materials. They carried out a process of fractional distillation, whereby used solvents were collected from their customers, and were either recovered and refined to the customer’s specification and then returned to the customer, or were recovered and refined for sale on the open market on the basis that they were not waste. The second claimant was collecting, recycling and reprocessing used oils and other waste. They were selling a substance called “recycled fuel oil”, derived from waste, contaminated, lubricating oils, and then sold to their customers to be burned as fuel. The Court analyzed the national and European legal framework and jurisdiction related to the matter and concluded that the second claimant was not entitled to any relief which would enable them to burn fuel oil other than in accordance with the European Waste Incineration Directive of 4 December 2000 or to treat it as having undergone a sufficient recovery process so as to establish that it was no longer waste. So far as concerned the first claimant however, they could take advantage of the so called ‘Oakley test’. According to this test, where the material was originally a fuel, or was available for the common purpose of being used as a fuel, then it could be recovered as a fuel by an appropriate process, and ceased to be waste if: a) it was chemically and physically identical to the original material b) it required no further processing. Two of the laundered distillates sold by the first claimant, Industrial Methylated Spirits and kerosene, were solvents commonly used as a fuel. The claimant could well be able to establish that those distillates had undergone regeneration or reclamation so that they could be reused.
Texto completo
SRM and OSS Group Ltd-v-Environment Agency.htm