Types of obligations, waste management operations, waste management responsibilities
Waste management operations
Directive 2008/98 prioritises the various waste management modalities as well as providing the rules applicable to waste management and apportioning responsibilities in this respect between the economic agents involved.
Waste management operations
It is necessary to prioritise waste management operations and to set the rules applicable to each type of these operations.
The hierarchy between various waste management operations
At the top of the waste management hierarchy, the Directive initially specifies what should be favoured: prevention. Prevention is defined as “measures taken before a substance, material or product has become waste”, and which limit the adverse impact of waste (Article 3 (12)). The quantity of waste produced can be limited by reuse or by the extension of the lifespan of products, and their content of harmful substances can be limited.
At the lower end of the hierarchy, disposal operations strictly speaking are the least favoured type of waste management operations. Disposal appears as a residual legal category defined as “any operation which is not recovery even where the operation has as a secondary consequence the reclamation of substance or energy” (Article 3 (19)). As a matter of practice, disposal essentially includes deposit into landfill, release at sea or in other water bodies, or incineration.
In other words, both prevention and disposal have a strategic role of limiting, at the top and the bottom, the quantity and types of waste; whatever waste remains because it could not be prevented and its disposal can be avoided shall be recovered.
Some kind of a “sub-hierarchy” is provided for between the various types of waste recovery: the intermediary situation which is preferred to disposal but less than prevention. Thus, within that category of recovery operations, “preparing for reuse” should be preferred to recycling, and recycling to any other type of recovery, including energy recovery, which itself is limited in its application (Article 4 (1)). The legal definition of preparation for reuse is that it consists of checking, cleaning or repairing waste (Article 3 (16)), albeit not requiring that waste be effectively reused, i.e. that it be used again for the same purpose for which it was conceived (Article 3 (13)). As to recycling, it must allow the reprocessing of waste material “into products, materials or substances whether for the original or other purposes” (Article 3 (17)). Lastly, high energy efficiency incineration is also accepted as recovery rather than disposal because, in contrast to other kinds of incineration, it produces useful energy or heat (see, Annex 2, R1).
The legal strength of the hierarchy is beyond questioning. It applies “as a priority order in waste prevention and management legislation and policy” (Article 4 (1)). Nonetheless, the hierarchy is neither rigid, nor strictly mandatory. The Member States are required to “take measures to encourage the options that deliver the best overall environmental outcome”, taking into account “life-cycle thinking on the overall impact of the generation and management of such waste” (Article 4 (2)).