The applicants took in ferrous scrap, sorted and cut it, selling it on to processors who would use the material in a second stage recycling process to produce ingots. The claimed entitlement to credit under the regulations.
Held: The second stage was a recycling process, but the first was not. A reprocessor was someone carrying out the process of recovery or recycling. ‘Recycling’ means reprocessing in a production process of the waste materials for the original purpose or for other purposes including organic recycling, but excluding energy recovery’. The provision of the 94 Directive were lex specialis as regards the earlier Directive, and it related to packaging waste only. Such packaging waste had to be worked to enable new material or product to be made from it with characteristics comparable to those of the material from which it was derived.
Advocate General Alber said: ‘The Court of Justice has thus refused to make classification of a material as waste dependent on its economic value, its fitness for reuse . . or the environmental hazards posed by it . . The holder’s conduct can be appraised only with regard to his intentions, a fact which causes the body applying the law considerable difficulties.
The Court of Justice solves this problem by inferring an intention to discard the substance from objective indicators; in doing so it has regard both to all the factual circumstances and to the aim of the waste Directive . .”
Judges:
Advocate General Alber
Citations:
C-444/00, Times 14-Jul-2003, [2003] EUECJ C-444/00, [2004] Env LR 6, [2004] 1 WLR 2644
Links:
Statutes:
Waste Management Licensing Regulations 1994 (1994/1056), Producer Responsibility Obligations (Packaging Waste) Regulations 1997 (1997 No 648), Council Directive 94/96/EC of December 20 1994 on packaging and packaging waste regulations
Cited by:
Cited – Ezeemo and Others v Regina CACD 16-Oct-2012
The defendants had been charged with offences relating to their intended transporting of waste materials to Nigeria. They appealed, complaining that the judge had directed that the offence under regulation 23 was an offence of strict liability.
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
European, Environment, Licensing
Updated: 07 June 2022; Ref: scu.184550