Landfill Tax – recent changes spark protests

On the 24th May 2012 traffic around Parliament Square in London was brought to a standstill by skip wagons protesting against changes to landfill tax charges. The cause of the protests were the innocuous sounding ‘clarification’ of LFT rules by HMRC resulting in certain soils now attracting the full £64/tonne standard rate of tax instead of the previous low rate (£2.50/tonne). The consequence of an immediate hike in landfill charges meant that waste hauliers were seriously out of pocket.

The real root cause dates back to 2008 when the Court of Appeal ruled against HMRC in relation to landfill tax paid for materials used for daily cover and site engineering purposes. The court agreed that the material had not been disposed of as waste and was therefore non taxable. Following this landmark case, the Treasury set aside around £300 million for claims made by waste management companies. Since then the Government has attempted to close this loophole by introducing two rates of landfill tax and the landfill tax (Qualifying Material) Order, which defines material that qualify for the lower LFT rate.

HMRC ‘Clarifications’ and impacts on Contaminated Land

The original clarification (Brief 15/12, May 2012) that caused so much outrage amongst waste hauliers and waste management companies made it more difficult for operators to pay the lower rate of LFT for contaminated soils. In response, the HMRC issued two further clarification documents (Brief 18/12, June 2012) and a document entitled Interim advice on lower rating. These attempted to specifically exclude contaminated soils from qualifying by stating “in respect of rocks and soils, where such materials are contaminated with materials such as asbestos, metal, wood, or contain elevated levels of chemical contaminants (heavy metals, hydrocarbons), they would fall outside the conditions required in the 2011 Order and therefore be liable to the standard rate.”

So how will these changes affect you? The likelihood is that your muck-a-way costs will continue to rise significantly. Furthermore, the standard rate charge increases to £72/tonne from April 2013. However, alternative options do exist and we can help you find a solution!

Regener8 Soil Conversion

Dunton Environmental Ltd can help you avoid the higher costs associated with landfill tax and you may even be able to re-use your soils on site, removing the costs of importing materials. By developing advanced technologies in the field of soils treatment and waste management we are able to provide faster, professional and low cost solutions for remediating contaminated land.

With over 8 years of on-site experience, Dunton Environmental has developed a formula which converts high liability contaminated soil wastes into reusable products. The soil is initially screened then treated according to the chemical nature of the soils (either by accelerated bioremediation or by the addition of Regener8 which utilizes chemical oxidation, chemical reduction and metathesis reactions) into non harmful products. The treated soils are then composted to increase its suitability as a plant growing medium.

This technology and process is compliant with Environmental legislation and meets the requirement of a ‘Best Practice’ site waste management plan. It can also be used to pre-treat contaminated soils prior to landfill to reduce the overall cost of cart way or used to treat heavily contaminated soils to render it suitable for use on site below a capping layer.

Why not book a free EnviroSMART Seminar?

Dunton’s EnviroSMART system will help you remove the waste out of waste management. It is faster, cheaper and simpler. It has been successfully used to assist major house builders and retailers in saving hundreds of thousands of pounds by diverting contaminated soils from landfill, in timescales that worked.

Training seminars are available on request. Our EnviroSMART seminars help educate Clients on remediation and waste management strategies and solutions for soil and waste recycling to reduce their waste disposal costs, saving time and money.

EradZion8 leading the Way in Rapid Knotweed Treatment

As you can all imagine, Dunton, being experts in the field, receive hundreds and hundreds of knotweed inquiries every year. Calls from a whole range of concerned clients come in from all over the country seeking solutions to their knotweed problems. What we find most interesting about all these calls is that there always seems to be one question that gets asked, and that is, "Why does Dunton not offer a Rhizome Picking method of treatment? Everyone else seems to do it".
It’s for this reason we thought we would write this article and share some knotweed truths with you.
Firstly, to understand why we don’t offer this method to you, our valued clients, it’s important to understand how knotweed grows. The challenge when dealing with knotweed is not the above ground vegetation but actually the roots. Knotweed is renowned for its complex root systems which can grow up to 7m in radius from each stem and can go down to a depth of 3m. As well as this, a piece of the root only a few centimetres in length can contain enough energy to grow and mature into a full size plant and this is where the real problem with knotweed is.

What Are The Risks When Using the Rhizome Picking Method?
The rhizome picking method was developed some years ago to deal with knotweed problems and comprises 3 main steps:

1. Excavation of knotweed contaminated soils
2. Picking out of knotweed roots (rhizomes)
3. Backfilling of soils (with the hope that they are now knotweed free)

Points 2 and 3 are the ones to really focus on as this is where the flaw in this process lies. These 2 points rely heavily on humans, and of course with that comes human error. The process requires humans to hand pick out all the roots from the soils, one by one. Not only can this be a long and laborious task, but the risks associated with this are huge! If just one single root is left in that soil, that could end up costing the client many thousands when it grows back. Simply put, using this process, it is almost impossible to guarantee that the knotweed will not grow back. There is no way one can be certain that they have removed every single root from that soil. It is for this reason why Dunton does not offer this treatment method to our clients.

EradZion8, formulated just for you!
It’s not all bad news though! Having realised the failures with the Rhizome picking method, the team here at Dunton invested a lot of research time, approximately 8 years, developing a suitable and very competitive alternative for you.
The EradZion8 solution removes as many of the knotweed roots as possible but to guarantee performance, we apply a purpose designed formula to the soil which removes all the risk of there being any residual knotweed left in the soil.  Dunton’s EradZion8 solution is a direct alternative to both digging and dumping at a landfill as well as to the rhizome picking method. The system has been used on a lot of sites up and down the country, even in Scotland and Ireland, and it still maintains a 100% no regrowth success rate.
If you would like more information on the EradZion8 Rapid Treatment Solution.

Dunton Completes Rapid Knotweed Eradication on a site in Little Bloxwich

Dunton has once again completed rapid knotweed treatment for a client using the EradZion8 treatment program. The works lasted 4 weeks and were in excess of fifty thousand pounds. By using Dunton’s EradZion8, an in-house developed system created to be a direct alternative to carting away to landfill, the client has been able to progress with their development and keep it on program and on budget.

Nelson Tanyanyiwa, a member of the technical team at Dunton, when asked to comment said, ‘I am delighted that we have been able to help our client with another of their developments. What is most pleasing is the fact that the client once again made an environmentally responsible decision by not carting away to landfill and rather opting for the EradZion8 system which encourages the reuse of treated soils back onsite. It’s absolutely important that market leading companies set the trend, raise the bar and take environmental issues seriously.’

By using Dunton’s system, which is reserved only for exclusive use by Dunton’s customers, the client made a saving by avoiding the landfill taxes associated with carting away to landfill. 

Waste Management – Are You Classifying Your Waste Correctly?

The recent Waste (England and Wales) Regulations 2011 introduced a new category to the list of properties defining waste as hazardous. These changes mean that some non-hazardous wastes may be reclassified as hazardous wastes. As a waste producer you have a Duty of Care to ensure that you have adequately characterised your waste for disposal.

Firstly, we need to dispel a commonly held misconception, Waste Acceptance Criteria (WAC) testing cannot be used to determine whether a waste is hazardous or non-hazardous. Essentially WAC testing is undertaken to determine how a waste will behave once its buried in a suitable landfill (environmental risk assessment). Whether a waste is hazardous is dependent upon the Hazardous Waste Regulations and is established by reference to the Hazardous Waste List of the European Waste Catalogue (hazard assessment).

Undertaking WAC analysis is time consuming and may incur unnecessary expense – look at the information you have and ask ‘what testing requirements do I really need?’. Need help – just ask Dunton. You could save yourself a lot of time and money.

So now that you have classified materials on site correctly, what’s next?

EnviroSMART Waste Management System

The 2011 Waste Regulations also require businesses to confirm that they have applied the waste management hierarchy when transferring waste. This hierarchy sets out, in order of priority, the waste management options you should consider. Subsequently, there is a real need for you to consider the impact of increasing waste disposal costs on your bottom line and ensure you are up to date with the latest techniques in waste management, to maintain market competition.

Did you know that waste management and soil remediation are not the same? Even though your land may have been ’remediated’ you may still have a residual contaminated land issue. This material may still be classed as hazardous and subject to the highest disposal costs during development. However, solutions are available to deal with your waste management disposal challenges and reduce the waste classification category.

Dunton’s enviroSMART system will help you remove the waste out of waste management. It is faster, cheaper and simpler. It has been successfully used to assist major house builders and retailers in saving hundreds of thousands of pounds by diverting contaminated soils from landfill, in timescales that worked.

Training seminars are available on request. Our enviroSMART seminars help educate Clients on remediation and waste management strategies and solutions for soil and waste recycling to reduce their waste disposal costs, saving time and money.

Japanese Knotweed Treatment in Days

During the winter season, the opportunity to commence and complete insitu spraying programmes for the treatment of Japanese Knotweed is no longer feasible. However, for your sites which still need a rapid solution we would recommend Dunton Environmental’s EradZion8 programme which is a quick alternative solution in tackling the ever increasing problems associated with Japanese Knotweed.
EradZion8 specifically treats Japanese Knotweed contaminated soils allowing the soils to be reused on site directly after treatment, reducing cost and time.
The process enables treated soils to be released back into the site within days of excavation.

• Great for fast track projects
• Direct alternative to traditional cart away (up to 70% saving on costs)
• Fully covered by our guarantee terms

For further information on our EradZion8 process please visit the relevant page on our website here.