marco muia

The Enviroman live at RWM09

Something you will never find in the Skip Mag is our Marco Muia “Enviroman” giving rubbish advice. He has flown to the rescue of our readers giving spot on advice when needed to save the day or the cheque book, sometimes both!!
Anyway here’s a rare out take of him talking rubbish at the RWM09 trade show, enjoy and read his latest article in the Skip Mag each month.

You can also talk to him live on 01606 558833 or visit his Waste Management Licensing site.

October 6, 2009 at 10:06 am | Environmental News | No comment

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Enviroman – April Fools

In January I rambled on at length about EP OPRA and the fact that you would need a mortgage to afford the proposed waste management licence application fees after 1st April 2006 only to find out at 5pm on 31st March 2006 that it ‘might’ not be coming in. Well more fool me for writing about something that didn’t happen and I really should have known better as the fee updates are always late. There was no mention of the delay in implementation on the Agency’s web site and I could not find a single Agency officer who could definitely say what was going to happen in April. This month the Agency celebrated its 10th anniversary on the web site by proclaiming its top ten successes and whilst we all agree that prosecuting fly-tippers, cleaning up our rivers and managing flood risk are worthy achievements would it be too much to ask for better communication with an industry that provides it with a significant revenue?
The good news is that EP OPRA hasn’t been implemented and the 2006/7 charging scheme for waste management increases last year’s fees by 2.8%. But next year can we please have the thing on time?!
One other interesting development is the introduction of fixed licences which will have a reduced application charge (by 10%) and speed up the application process if the applicant uses a standard Agency risk assessment and a schedule of standard conditions is accepted. The licences will appeal to many operators because of the reduced costs but small savings in the application fee could result in much higher costs later as the licences currently shown on the EA’s web site have very restricted lists of permitted wastes. The main concern for any applicant should be that their new licence allows them to do what they plan to do. With much of my daily toil consisting of licence modifications to add new waste types to older licences, I can foresee these simplified licences requiring modification sooner rather than later. The moral of the application process is to apply for as wide a list of wastes on the licence as possible, even if you don’t intend to take them at the time of applying because modifications are both costly and time consuming. If a potential customer’s waste cannot be accepted at your site the tender is likely to go to someone else.
Mines, farms and quarries now subject to waste law.
The Waste Management (England and Wales) Regulations 2006 have been passed and come into force on 15th May 2006. Finally, after 12 years of waiting, mining, quarry and agricultural waste will become controlled waste and, with limited exceptions, subject to normal waste controls. In summary the Regulations make the following changes of interest to the skip business (with the emphasis on agricultural waste):
1. Farmers will not be able to bury their wastes after 15th June 2006 unless they prepare a conditioning plan for the landfill site and submit it to the Environment Agency for consideration, after which the Agency may permit continued operations, subject to stricter controls or close the site. Farm dumps will not continue as a result of this process.
2. It is estimated that less than 2% of the agricultural premises in England and Wales (>160,000) will apply for licences with the remainder having to opt for off-site disposal or recovery. Most farmers will not want a landfill permit because of the high developmental and operational costs involved.
3. Other than landfill, farmers will also have to register exemptions or apply for licences for disposal or recovery of some of their wastes but will not have to pay application fees (at present) and have up to 12 months to do so.
4. The government’s view is that the new controls will apply to non mineral mines and quarries waste.
5. The newly controlled wastes will be subject to the duty of care and carrier registration requirements, with limited exceptions, such as the carriage of animal by-products. However, producers of many wastes will still be exempt if carrying their own waste and carriers only engaged in the transport of mining, quarry or agricultural waste on a professional basis do not need to register.
6. The hazardous waste regime does not apply to the new wastes until 15th May 2007 so farmers can store their waste at the farm for up to 12 months, after which they must use send their waste to a site with a suitable licence, permit or exemption.
7. Farmers cannot burn non-natural wastes in the open air after 15th May 2006, particularly plastics and tyres. Drum incinerator used to burn rinsed polyethylene pesticide containers will be permitted for another 12 months.
The regulations may not present a huge increase in business for all skip operators but it is important to treat the newly controlled wastes in the same manner as household, commercial and industrial wastes to help affected farm premises comply with the new requirements. Further guidance from the Agency and DEFRA is expected shortly.
Marco Muia BSc (Hons) MSc MCIWM is the Director of Oaktree Environmental Limited. He specialises in all aspects of waste regulation consultancy and is a WAMITAB accredited assessor for the COTCs in waste transfer, treatment and inert landfill. He also holds the level 4 COTCs for Hazardous Waste Treatment and Transfer. You can contact Marco on 01606 558833 if you have any questions about this article.

May 12, 2006 at 9:32 am | Environmental News | No comment

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Enviroman – Mr. Brown’s Tax Escalator!

In October 1996 the Finance Act 1996 ushered in the landfill tax at a lowly standard rate of £7.00 per tonne for active waste (compared with today’s prices of £21.00 per tonne from 1/4/06) and £2.00 per tonne for inactive waste, which remains the same. Although the tax was introduced before Mr. Brown took occupation of No.11 he has welcomed the extra revenue for the treasury with open arms by introducing an escalator which will see the tax rise to £35.00 per tonne by 2011 and reducing the amount that can be taken as landfill tax credits from 20% to 6.7%. There is no doubt that the tax has driven waste away from landfill and encouraged (or forced?) investment in recycling to separate active from inactive waste. Whilst most people in the waste business are aware of the tax there are still a number of myths and misconceptions doing the rounds almost 10 years later, which I shall concentrate on below.
I am often asked the difference between the two tax bands and whether or not inactive waste means inert. Inactive waste is a much broader classification than inert waste and therefore alien to the normal waste definitions we know from the Environmental Protection Act 1990 and the EC Landfill Directive. The Landfill Tax (Qualifying Material) Order 1996 identifies 9 groupings of waste which can be classified as inactive, summarised as follows:
Group 1 Rocks and soils (including topsoil, peat, silt and dredgings).
Group 2 Ceramic or concrete materials (excluding glass-reinforced plastic).
Group 3 Minerals , including moulding sands, mineral absorbents, man-made mineral
fibres, silica, mica, mineral abrasives (including made mineral fibres such as
glass fibres, but not asbestos).
Group 4 Furnace slags (including slag from waste incineration).
Group 5 Ash i.e. bottom ash and fly ash from wood, coal or waste combustion (excluding
fly ash from municipal, clinical, and hazardous waste incinerators and sewage
sludge incinerators).
Group 6 Low activity inorganic compounds.
Group 7 Calcium sulphate (excluding plasterboard).
Group 8 Calcium hydroxide and brine (Deposited in brine cavity).
Group 9 Water containing other qualifying material in suspension.
The landfill operator can agree that your waste is inactive but must keep sufficient evidence to justify applying the lower rate of tax to any load. The description on the transfer note must relate to wastes specified in the order quoted above. This issue is of increasing importance as operators of materials reclamation facilities (MRFs) will know that the ‘fines’ or ‘soils’ from their process can be highly variable in consistency and that the Environment Agency may classify the output as non-inert waste which could mistakenly lead to the levy of the full rate of tax at the weighbridge. The good news is that whether the Agency consider the waste to inert or not is irrelevant because inactive waste does not mean inert waste, however, it is still for the landfill operator to make the decision.
In the case of mixed loads, where waste contains both active and inactive materials, tax is due on the whole load at the standard rate. However, as long as it does not lead to any potential for pollution, you may ignore the presence of an incidental amount of active waste in a mostly inactive load, and treat the whole load as taxable at the lower rate. This could include a load of rubble containing small pieces of wood, a load of soil containing small quantities of grass and a load of soil and stone from street works containing tarmac. The main criteria for making the decision not to charge the full rate is that the small quantity of active waste does not have the potential to pollute or if it is difficult to separate active components from the inactive waste.
So if you feel that your waste is inactive take it up with the landfill operator and they should discuss it with HM Customs and Revenue. On a good day this will mean that fines which have little commercial value can be used as landfill cover or even restoration, which is almost always a requirement of the landfill permit. On a bad day it may mean that your waste will not be welcome as inactive and attract the higher rate. At a time when skip prices lag behind increases in disposal costs the disposal or further recycling of residues has become an important issue.
The answers to other landfill tax issues I regularly get asked are summarised below (please refer to www.hmrc.gov.uk for the full details):
1. The tax exemption for materials excavated from contaminated land does not apply to inert
or inactive waste but to waste which must be removed for the remediation to be
successful. A certificate of exemption must be applied for before disposal.
2. To discount the water content of waste from the taxable weight the water must not be
present naturally in the waste i.e. if the water has been added to allow transportation for
disposal or arisen or been added or both, in the course of an industrial process, for
example.
3. Tax free areas on landfill sites are set up to permit the deposit of waste for storage or
processing and not for disposal.
4. Restoration of quarries is exempt from the tax if certain conditions are met.
5. VAT applies to the full amount on load for disposal, including the landfill tax.
6. Dredgings (material removed from water) are exempt from landfill tax, with exceptions.
7. Waste arising from mining and quarrying operations and disposed of to landfill is exempt
from landfill tax, with exceptions.
8. Pet cemeteries are licensed as landfill sites but the burial of dead pets is not taxable.
9. Restoration of landfills e.g. after capping of the waste, may qualify for exemption for the
restoration materials as long as justification can be given to HMRC before waste used for
the purposes of restoring a landfill is deposited.
10. The landfill tax credit scheme allows the landfill operator to claim back 6.7% of landfill tax
paid for qualifying projects (local community environmental projects) regulated by
ENTRUST as long as the amount reclaimed contributes no more than 90% of the
project’s cost.

Marco Muia BSc (Hons) MSc MCIWM is the Director of Oaktree Environmental Limited. He specialises in all aspects of waste regulation consultancy and is a WAMITAB accredited assessor for the COTCs in waste transfer, treatment and inert landfill. He also holds the level 4 COTCs for Hazardous Waste Treatment and Transfer.

April 8, 2006 at 2:50 pm | Environmental News | No comment

Tags: landfill tax, marco muia, skip hire, skip hire uk, skips

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Enviroman – Environment Protection, Operator and Pollution Risk Appraisal (EP OPRA)

EP OPRA – RISK BASED REGULATION OR STEALTH TAXATION?
Ongoing landfill tax rises (£21.00 per tonne for active waste in April 2006) coupled with regular increases in landfill gate fees are making it harder to profit from skip waste without having a transfer station or recycling site. Is it a coincidence that at a time when environmental taxes are rising to encourage recycling and recovery that the cost of waste management licence applications is set to rise sharply yet again? In April 2005 charges for waste management licence applications rose dramatically, 570% for applications to transfer licences, to pick an extreme example.
In September 2005 the Agency consulted on its new charging system, EP OPRA (Environment Protection, Operator and Pollution Risk Appraisal) version 3.1 and the consultation ended in December 2005, with the final document being issued (hopefully) before 1 April 2006 after consultation comments have been considered.
Rather than using ‘look up’ tables to calculate fees EP OPRA uses a complex Excel spreadsheet to obtain an OPRA score which then uses a fee multiplier to calculate application and subsistence fees.
Whilst larger sites may have a slight variation in application fees smaller sites will be most affected. At the ‘starter’ end of the market, skip firms are most likely to apply for a waste management licence to treat (sort) and keep (store) non-hazardous, household, commercial and industrial waste in the 5,000 tonnes per annum band. The fee for such an application was £1,705 from April 2004 and rose to £5,627 in April 2005.
What will the same application cost under EP OPRA?
Entering the details of several small operational transfer stations into the spreadsheet gave EP OPRA scores in the region of 50 to 55 points. With the fee multiplier set at £220 per point for new licence applications this will mean an application fee of £11,000 – £12,100, an increase of over 700% since April 2004.
Without talking through the system at length, most of you will be interested in the impact upon your site or proposed site and what you can do now. The simple answer is that if you have a licence application of any sort to be submitted in the next few months then you must calculate the fee to decide whether or not to submit the application before or after 1 April 2006 if you want to save money.
How will annual subsistence fees be affected?
Subsistence fees will be calculated using a fee multiplier of £75 which would place the same small site in an annual subsistence fee of £3,750 to £4,125, compared with £1,800 in April 2005. If you have had a letter from the EA regarding your site’s OPRA score in the last 6 months, respond to it as soon as possible as you may be able to reduce the OPRA scores by as much as 12 points on operator performance by querying the letter, thereby reducing subsistence fees for the site.
What factors are assessed when calculating the score?
The application fee score is calculated using four attributes each of which is scored in banded profiles using letters in the range A (lowest risk) to E (highest risk) as follows:
1. Complexity – fixed points based on site type (range of 4 – 65 points)
2. Emissions – variable points based on waste inputs for non-landfill sites (range of 1 – 7
points)
3. Location – fixed points based on location (range of 3 – 40 points)
4. Operator performance – variable points based on performance which is a combination of
paper systems and environmental track record (range of 2 – 14 points)
The main failing of EP OPRA is that the bulk of the score cannot be changed by installing better infrastructure. Your site type, waste inputs and location will determine over 80% of the score. This will, however, change when a fifth attribute, Compliance rating, using the EA’s Compliance Classification Scheme (CCS) is brought in which will reward better operators (more compliant) with a deduction of 5 points off their OPRA score and the worst operators with up to 30 points added to their score.
In theory an OPRA score can range from 10 to 126 points, with the potential to be as high as 156 points for the worst operators. If the Agency is truly to assess sites based on risk and their frequency of inspection etc. then surely the Operator Performance and Compliance rating scores should account for the bulk of the fee.
In reality there is little we can do to change the scheme drastically but making sure your application proposals are carefully considered before submission could save you a lot of money, which is better spent on your site infrastructure. Of the other changes to the fees scheme none is as significant as EP OPRA. Some sites will only have a minor increase in fees such as End of Life Vehicle facilities, whilst carrier/broker registrations and paragraph 45 exemption registrations will rise in line with inflation. Notifiable exemptions are not mentioned in the scheme.

Marco Muia BSc (Hons) MSc MCIWM is the Director of Oaktree Environmental Limited. He specialises in all aspects of waste regulation consultancy and is a WAMITAB accredited assessor for the COTCs in waste transfer, treatment and inert landfill. He also holds the level 4 COTCs for Hazardous Waste Treatment and Transfer.

February 10, 2006 at 9:43 am | Environmental News | No comment

Tags: enviroman, marco muia, skip hire, skip hire uk, skips

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0844 560 7706

marco muia

The Enviroman live at RWM09

Enviroman – April Fools

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