INDUSTRY
NEWS Send your news stories to:
editor@skiphiremagazine.co.uk
@SkipHireMag 0161 482 6220
Public and private sectors join forces to tackle waste crime
THE UK’s Waste Compliance Taskforce (WACT) was officially launched at the Waste Crime Conference in October, heralding a new way of working to tackle one of the waste and recycling sector’s biggest issues.
WACT comprises a number of organisa- tions from across the public and private sector, including regulators, trade as- sociations, landowners, businesses and charities.
Its aim is to raise awareness of waste crime and work towards combatting it by helping businesses and organisations to be compliant. It will do this through a number of working groups which will aim to understand, tackle and ultimately reduce waste crime, covering the issue from all angles.
Stuart Foster, CEO of plastics charity RECOUP, Fellow of the CIWM and 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.
6
“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.”
The aim of WACT is to gather and share intelligence about waste crime and to understand some of the challenges being faced by certain waste streams. 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 who can inadvertently become caught up in it by unscrupulous criminals.
It plans to use intelligence to design interventions to tackle waste crime, and to communicate what it has learnt in order to influence policy and legislative changes.
WACT’s remit is separate to that of the Joint Unit for Waste Crime (JUWC) which was launched by the Government at the start of this year as part of its Resources and Waste Strategy. The JUWC is made up of law enforcement agencies, environ- mental regulators, HMRC and the National
Crime Agency and its remit is to enforce the law.
“Tackling the growing problem of waste crime is going to require much more proactive cross-sector collaboration, from more effective intelligence sharing through to promoting a better under- standing of the risks of waste crime and raising awareness in areas such as Duty of Care,” added Stuart.
“UK governments and the resources and waste sector are already working more closely in this area and WACT, with its wider membership, has an important contribution to make to the development of smarter and more effective frameworks to deal with waste crime.”
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.”
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63
