LAWR

TEEP Fitting TEEP considerations into your procurement cycles Councils are under pressure to have the evidence ready that their recycling collection services produce quality recyclates. Here, LRS' Geoff Green analyses the issue. he 1 January 2015 deadline for compli- ance with the much discussed TEEP (tech- nically, environmen- tally and economically practicable) requirements has passed and many local authorities are either midway through a review process or even still deciding what approach they should take. Whilst WRAP's Waste Regulations Route Map has been identified by the Environment Agency as being good practice, the exact way it has been used to evidence that recycling collec- tion schemes have been evaluated for suitability are many and varied. One wonders how many councils still do not have TEEP on their risk registers. With the current uncer- tainty about how the courts might respond to any challenge, it certainly does represent an unquantifiable risk. The revised Waste Framework Directive (rWFD) of 2008 aims to move the EU closer to being a "recy- cling society" with "high levels of resource efficiency". The Waste (England and Wales) Regulations 2011 introduced a duty on waste produc- ers to apply the waste hierarchy to ensure that resources and materials are reused or recovered, wherever pos- sible, and prevented from being sent to landfill. Practically, this means that local authorities, their contractors and pri- vate waste producers have responsi- bilities for recycling ever-increasing amounts of materials and ensuring that they are of sufficient quality to be reprocessed into secondary commodi- ties that can be used as raw materials in another supply chain. Risks and opportunities The 2011 Regulations and their sub- sequent 2012 amendment introduced the additional requirement on collec- tors of waste to collect waste paper, metal, plastic and glass separately. The interpretation of this require- ment has, for the last couple of years, led to much debate about the risks and opportunities for local author- ity waste and recycling management systems. Typically, the requirement to col- lect 'separately' has been interpret- ed in such a way that commingling of materials (especially in schemes which include glass in the commin- gled stream) would not be acceptable under the new Regulations. However, if the waste collector col- 10 Local Authority Waste & Recycling January 2015 T " In the pre- procurement stage, it is essential to set the authority's overall direction of travel "

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