Waste in the Netherlands: Legislation
Waste in the Environmental Management Act
As already mentioned the legal framework for waste disposal in 1976 and 1977 were the Chemical Waste Act and the Wastes Act. In March 1993 the rules on procedures, establishments and plans in the two acts were incorporated into the Environmental Management Act. The remaining parts of the two waste acts were incorporated into the Waste chapter (Chapter 10) of the Environmental Management Act on 1 January 1994.
Some features of this chapter are;
* it solved the bottlenecks occurring in implementing the old waste legislation;
* it addressed the incorporation of international regulations;
* it became possible to respond readily to new developments
Contents of the Waste chapter
The Waste chapter keeps track as it were of the product at the waste phase. First of all rules are set to prevent waste arising, the so-called preventive measures. Next there are rules on the discarding and collection of waste. Finally there are regulations on treating, processing, destroying and landfilling waste.
It would be impossible to deal with the entire waste chapter in this information sheet. A few of the main parts are mentioned below however:
* the act includes an order of preference for the disposal of waste which is: prevention, reuse/recycling, incineration, landfill;
* the landfilling or incineration of waste can be prohibited;
* the manufacture or import of a certain product can be prohibited;
* producers and importers may be obliged to take back a product at the waste stage and to dispose of it or have it disposed of in a certain way;
* companies and waste collectors may be obliged to separate waste, to keep it separate, to hand it in separately or to process it in a different way on the spot;
* rules are being drawn up on the transshipment of waste within, to and from the European Community;
* the Minister of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment may issue rules to include regulations in provincial environmental bylaws or local authority bylaws.
Ministerial decisions
As mentioned earlier the Environmental Management Act is a framework act and various subjects have to be worked out in greater detail in supplementary regulations.
Some of the main waste orders issued by the Minister for Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment are: the Decree designating hazardous substances, the Waste Incineration (Air Emissions) Decree, the Waste (Landfill Ban) Decree, the Decree on the disposal of batteries, the Decree on the disposal of car tires, the Decree on the disposal of car wrecks and the Decree on the collection of waste oil.
Provincial environmental bylaws notably include rules on the disposal of commercial waste and hazardous waste such as:
* rules on collection;
* the ban on exporting commercial waste to another province;
* rules on reporting the submission or receipt of commercial waste and hazardous waste.
In addition supplementary regulations can be laid down by means of provincial environmental bylaws for the collection of household waste by the local authority. This is conditional on the disposal of the household waste being a matter that extends beyond the interests of the local authority.
Local authority waste bylaws mainly include rules on the disposal of household waste e.g. which components have to be kept separate, the frequency of waste collection and the agencies carrying out the collections.
New developments
In 1996 an independent committee of experts submitted an advisory report to the Minister of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment on the future Organization of waste disposal in the Netherlands. The report made a number of important recommendations: to abandon provincial boundaries for waste disposal and to give the Minister of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment the responsibility for planning the final disposal capacity of both hazardous and non-hazardous waste. The committee advised that the latter should be done in the form of a national waste management plan.
In late 1996 the said minister informed the Lower House of Parliament (Tweede Kamer) that she would be adopting most of the recommendations. This will require changes to the Environmental Management Act: the proposals for this are expected to be drafted in late 1998.
More information on the Waste Policy is available on the internet site of the Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment. This website contains the following documents:
* The Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulations and the Packaging Covenant II
* Waste in the Netherlands Information sheets:
* Separate waste products
* Waste prevention
* Incineration
* Landfill
* Monitoring waste
* Producer responsibility
* Household waste
