The UK public is having ‘access to environmental justice impeded’, according to zero waste campaigners. Specifically, anti-incineration activists say that residents of the United Kingdom are having their Aarhus rights ‘violated’ in relation to waste infrastructure planning.

The claim concerns the lack of opportunities for community participation in decisions and contracts made by local authorities with the waste industry. For the UK to fulfil its ‘access to justice’ obligations, they say, there must be compliance with the Aarhus Convention, which provides for the right to access environmental information, public participation in environmental decision-making, and access to justice in environmental matters.

‘Access to justice’ denied, says Green

Jane Green of Sustainability West Midlands recently presented one such case before the European Parliament’s Committee on Petitions, reporting her statement for Isonomia.

Speaking on 16 September, Green argued that communities in the UK are presently denied effective participation in key decisions affecting the local and wider environment.

In particular, waste management contracts are beyond public scrutiny as “the most expensive, long-lasting and complicated contracts that the local authority ever enters into, and yet. . . the least democratic” according to the concerns of the Aarhus Case Studies Project.

Green indicated that for both environmental and economic reasons, citizens have a vested interest in participating in their council’s choice of waste management methods.

The root of the problem

Green broadly criticised the “secrecy” of the UK’s ‘private finance initiative’ (PFI) system, which is widely used by councils to raise capital for new waste infrastructure, the limited public access to information and the difficulty in telling whether councils are choosing the option that offers the best value for money in balancing both economic and environmental considerations. Green also raised concerns over the “rigid” nature of PFI contracts, noting that the 25-30-year agreements “are unable to respond to the rapidly changing waste world”.

In her presentation to the Committee on Petitions, Green said: “I have found that: the secrecy that surrounds PFI contracts, due to ‘commercial confidentiality’, makes it impossible for the public to properly understand the environmental arguments and weigh up costs and benefits; while the local authority and its developers use the services of lawyers and experts to make their case, members of the public seeking to contest the development do not have the resources to make their arguments effectively.”

The high cost of legal and technical advice, according to Green, disenfranchises the public from exercising its right to effective participation and limits the potential for proper understanding of the environmental arguments and the weighing up of costs and benefits of waste management systems.

Waste contract ‘bias’

As a result, Green claims there has been a bias towards incineration plants as opposed to high recycling systems, citing the industry’s lobbying power as a key factor. This, Green says, has led to incinerator overcapacity in the UK and Europe, and an underappreciation of high-recycling modular systems, as “lack of access to clear information can make it impossible for communities to show that a green alternative makes economic sense”.

And, she noted, the economic case for higher recycling is strong: “Best practice authorities are already achieving recycling rates of 70 per cent and at lower costs than low recycling authorities. They are benefitting from income from the sale of recyclables. By using modern collection methods for separate waste streams, such as food waste, they are accessing the competitive and often cheaper waste market.”

Aarhus Case Studies Project

Following her presentation, Green is gathering case studies “where members of the public have not been able to obtain the information they needed about a waste planning decision, or have otherwise been excluded from effective participation, e.g. because time (and/or money) ran out before there was the opportunity to challenge a decision”.

Read more about the Aarhus Case Studies Project.