The UK Environment Agency has granted the Shanks Group permission to export refuse derived fuel to facilities on mainland Europe. The company requested this as there is an over-capacity of recovery facilities on the continent.
Approval has been given for Shanks to export 40,000 tonnes within in the next year which will be used as feedstock by energy recovery plants in Germany and the Netherlands. Shanks had pointed out that there was a high demand for RDF outside the UK and that some waste treatment facilities have been reclassified under the Waste Framework Directive to ‘recovery’ facilities rather than ‘disposal’ facilities. UK law prohibits the disposal of waste material abroad under the Transfrontier Shipment of Waste Regulations 2007.
The Environment Agency has stated that tis is the first arrangement of this kind in the UK, and said that energy recovery of fuel ‘is not dumping’.
