A taskforce aiming to raise awareness of waste crime and to work towards combatting it is to be launched at letsrecycle.com’s virtual Waste Crime Conference on 22 October.
The UK’s Waste Compliance Taskforce (WACT) comprises several organisations from across the public and private sector, including regulators, trade associations, landowners, businesses and charities. It is to run a number of working groups aiming to understand, tackle and ultimately reduce waste crime.
WACT plans to use intelligence to design interventions to tackle waste crime
Stuart Foster, CEO of plastics charity RECOUP and the chair of WACT, said: “Waste crime is the scourge of our industry. It’s estimated that it costs the UK economy around £1 billion a year but it also potentially puts lives at risk and erodes the public’s trust in the waste and recycling sector.
“It’s crucial that we all come together now to tackle this from every angle so that the organised criminals who are making money out of illegal activities involving the UK’s waste are stopped once and for all.”
WACT was formerly known as the Legitimate Waste Trade Advisory Group, a multi-agency project co-funded by the EU LIFE Programme and led by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA). Once the project was complete, members felt the group was likely to have an increasingly important role in raising awareness and tackling waste crime at source, and so have relaunched as the WACT.
A full list of WACT members can be seen here.
Remit
WACT aims to gather and share intelligence about waste crime and to understand some of the challenges faced by certain waste streams.
“Waste crime is the scourge of our industry”
The WACT group will work with businesses from all sectors of the waste and recycling industry and beyond, including landowners who are the victims of waste crime and waste producers.
It plans to use intelligence to design interventions to tackle waste crime, and to communicate what it has learnt to influence policy and legislative change.
WACT’s remit is separate to that of the Joint Unit for Waste Crime (JUWC), which was launched by the government in January as part of its Resources and Waste Strategy (see letsrecycle.com story). The JUWC is made up of law enforcement agencies, environmental regulators, HMRC and the National Crime Agency. Its remit is to enforce the law.
Support
Sam Corp, head of regulation at the Environmental Services Association (ESA), said: “ESA is pleased to support the work of the Taskforce which chimes with our own work on tackling waste crime by raising awareness of and compliance with waste regulations, promoting proactive and effective enforcement and supporting policy makers to develop more effective ways to help keep the criminals out of our sector.”
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Source: letsrecycle.com Waste Managment
