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ESA Environmental Crime Seminar
Dirk Hazell, Chief Executive, ESA
5 February 2002
Mr Chairman, My Lords, Ladies, Gentlemen and distinguished guests.
I would like to thank the Associate Parliamentary Sustainable Waste Group for organising this event. The distinction of all those attending today is itself a sign that environmental crime is a growing problem.
Environmental crime inflicts economic, environmental and social damage on society. This is increasingly recognised across the political spectrum.
For example, in his recent lecture Beyond the Causes of Crime, the Shadow Home Secretary identified tackling local environmental crime as an essential prerequisite to protecting neighbourhoods from greater levels of criminality and deprivation.
This approach is consistent with zero tolerance in the UK for environmental crime, a policy that would require both durable and strong partnerships and tough decisions.
But it must be done. You may agree that we are starting a century which will require more care than the last with the environment. We are certainly entering a period where public debate is starting to envisage new balances between individual freedom and environmental protection.
Environmental crime imposes economic costs. Kay is the expert on local government but the BBC suggested that fly-tipping costs local authorities £100 million each year.
Social costs of flytipping are illustrated by the group of children in the West Midlands who were found innocently playing with fly-tipped asbestos. This example also illustrates both the wickedness of those who commit environmental crime and the indiscriminate and long term damage that can result.
Environmental crime has been linked to protection rackets and in some areas, employees of ESA's Members are routinely physically threatened and intimidated by environmental criminals.
Environmental criminals deliberately damage the environment for personal gain.
In contrast, ESA's strictly regulated Members seek to improve the environment by managing waste generated by society as sustainably as the Government decides the country can afford. Our industry owes its existence to regulation and is characterised by a strong sense of vocation and public service. Our Members deliver essential environmental benefits to society.
Indeed, where they can, ESA's Members often exceed the minimum requirements of the law.
Our Members are increasingly implementing non-statutory environmental management systems such as those of the International Organisation for Standardisation.
Within our membership, more than half the industry's turnover has already signed up to environmental performance indicators recently developed by the Green Alliance and we will expect our remaining Members to adopt these indicators, or international equivalents, in the near future.
Britain has the most strictly regulated waste management facilities in the World. As I have already suggested, the regulated industry we represent is among the many victims of environmental crime.
We believe unregulated environmental criminals siphon at least tens of millions of pounds annually away from legitimate regulated businesses.
Environmental criminals undermine legitimate regulated businesses. Environmental criminals deny people the safe and protected employment conditions offered by legitimate businesses. Environmental criminals prevent controlled and environmentally benign management of waste.
ESA's Members are willing to invest hundreds of millions of pounds a year in next generation and environmentally sustainable infrastructure. If the UK is to comply with existing international obligations, and particularly with the Landfill Directive, it is essential that this investment continues to be made.
To keep this investment flowing, one essential requirement is that the State guarantees regulation will require waste to be directed to regulated infrastructure, with zero tolerance of criminal evasion of regulated facilities.
For other utilities many components of regulation are simply a cost.
For ESA, effective and progressively stricter "green" regulation is the principal driver towards the economic and environmental sustainability underpinning our industry's future.
The economic future of ESA's Members is not based on increasing volumes of waste but on adding more value to stable or falling waste volumes by acting as a partner with waste producers and by becoming much more integrated into a sustainable productive cycle.
In some respects, we out-green the Government. For example, following operational changes resulting from the Landfill Directive, ESA believes that to the extent that hazardous waste cannot be redeployed within the productive economy, the Government must promptly require it to be managed to Final Storage Quality before final management in landfill.
We hope and believe that future generations will see this period as one of fundamental change in both public and corporate decision making, with environmental sustainability becoming a central component of decisions.
Implementation of the Landfill Directive and the Producer Responsibility inspired Directives will of course impose cost on the British economy. However, it also brings benefits.
Stricter environmental regulation can bring with it good new British jobs and the opportunity to develop exportable know-how.
In the overall scheme of things, net additional costs will in any case be modest, and perhaps non-existent as we increasingly move to fuller environmental accounting.
We recognise that, to offset costs, the Government may be attracted to raising the landfill tax to levels seen elsewhere in Europe. While this could help to solve some problems by making recycling less expensive compared to landfill, it may also tempt some to break the law.
The UK must bite the bullet. We must ensure that the risk reward ratio of seeking to evade relatively modest environmental compliance costs, which are well within limits the UK can afford, means that no waste producer will ask criminals unlawfully to dispose of waste.
The solution seems to lie in EU Member States such as the Netherlands where strict environmental legislation is effectively enforced.
Governments will need to accept that every new EU environmental Directive must be backed by adequate funding to secure effective enforcement.
The UK is trailing in the field. PriceWaterhouseCoopers recently reported in a study comparing the national environmental authorities of Germany, the Netherlands, Britain, Denmark and Switzerland that Denmark spends per capita the most on environmental protection and Britain the least.
A focussed Environment Agency concentrating resources and consistently targeting those who pose the greatest environmental risk is therefore absolutely crucial and must command the widest possible political and public support.
It is of course easy for us to say and much more difficult for the Agency to do but the Agency must do what is right, not what is easy.
The Agency must be toughest on those who are most aggressive, whose transgressions are most difficult to detect and whose adverse environmental impact is greatest.
This calls for a regulator with stature and adequate resourcing. ESA was grateful for the support of the Environment Agency's Chairman, Sir John Harman, when we made representations to the then Home Secretary, Jack Straw, on the need for magistrates to make full use of their powers to fine and, where necessary, to pass cases to the Crown Court.
The public must understand that unlawful deposit of waste without a waste management licence or registered exemption is a crime attracting an unlimited fine or imprisonment of up to five years. To flytip asbestos where children will play with it is a serious crime deserving a stiff prison sentence.
ESA shares the Agency's frustration that the effort involved in successfully prosecuting waste criminals can result in the Courts imposing derisory sentences.
We are pleased to learn that the Magistrates Association is now raising awareness and improving training amongst its Members. We hope judges will learn from this example and help to remove environmental crime from Britain.
Barbara Young has decisively proved she can get the better of Jeremy Paxman. After one year at the Agency, she's also demonstrating that she's up for tackling environmental criminals.
ESA is pleased that the Environment Agency is to establish a central unit to co-ordinate its approach to environmental crime. We understand that this unit will work with other key enforcement bodies, such as local authorities, the police and HM Customs and Excise and will target particular environmental threats such as fly-tipping.
ESA recognises that we must play our part in the partnership needed to effectively tackle environmental crime. We are delighted to work with the Agency and other relevant authorities to provide such intelligence as we can on the activities of environmental criminals.
We are pleased to serve in the Anti Fly-tipping partnership and delighted to see so many partner organisations present here today.
One of ESA's committees has been charged with drawing up a series of campaign strategies which in time ESA Members may be able to run with ENCAMS, local authorities, the Environment Agency and other partners.
Our intention is to monitor the success of these campaigns and to showcase and disseminate good practice examples of effective partnership working against environmental crime. I hope it will be possible to apply the Landfill Tax Credit Scheme to this end.
Mobile CCTV units can help to target "hotspots" but they are only part of the a the necessary co-ordination of effective enforcement which I suspect will need heavy reliance on skilled undercover work.
ESA sees value in local authorities reporting incidences of fly-tipping to a central Government unit.
The incentive to do this could be provided by a government fund which to provide targeted resources to particularly afflicted areas.
Of course, there are already some excellent initiatives taking place and which deserve commendation: for example, among those represented here today, the London Boroughs of Lewisham and Merton. Again, Kay will know more about this than do I but we understand that more than 30 local authorities are working in consortia to develop best practice for dealing with environmental offences.
We must work together to change perceptions to make environmental crime as unacceptable as drink driving.
ENCAMS have illustrated the scale of the task by reporting on attitudes of 13-16 year olds towards litter, with peer pressure and the desire to appear cool as strong contributory factors to littering. This younger generation will need to build a much more resource efficient culture.
It is our duty to help successor generations on their way with very strong partnerships involving all levels of government, regulators, the productive economy, responsible mainstream NGOs and, critically, attractive role models. The unambiguous message must be that environmental crime is uncool or whatever else it is currently bad for teenagers to be.
It is not in ESA's power to stop environmental crime.
However, ESA and our Members are an essential and natural partner in a war society as a whole must win. We will, in partnership with so many who are here today, actively support in both word and deed those whose duty it is to fight environmental crime on the front line. 
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