The U.K.’s waste business faces a double whammy of potentially smelly problems.

One is a disorderly Brexit that threatens to add red tape and complications to a country that’s the EU’s top garbage exporter; the other is a clampdown on waste imports by the Netherlands — the largest recipient of British trash.

The Dutch government is planning a tax on trash and predicts that “the imported waste stream is expected to evaporate completely over time,” according to budget plans published on September 18.

The result could be that landfills in Britain end up overflowing with thousands of tons of rotting garbage.

At first glance, early fears that Brexit could throttle the garbage trade between the U.K. and the rest of the Continent have largely dissipated. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said in March that the trade in waste materials will continue after the U.K. leaves the bloc — deals have been secured with EU countries to maintain all the U.K.’s notified waste shipments in the event of a no-deal Brexit.

The Netherlands is the largest importer of U.K. waste, receiving 1.3 million tons of British garbage in 2018 — almost half the country's total trash exports.

But that doesn't mean there are no worries outstanding.

Waste operators say they’re still concerned that exports of waste will be physically halted or delayed by port congestion following a no-deal Brexit. With 15 percent of the waste that the U.K. sends to the EU moving through the port of Dover, changes and disruptions to border controls may cause significant backlogs.

“Residual waste going to the EU cannot be stored for too long,” said Jakob Rindegren of the U.K. Environmental Services Association, an industry lobby. With limited sites in the U.K. to deal with this garbage, rubbish from the more densely populated southeast could also be sent to landfills in northern England, he said.

Rindegren said the waste lobby is advising its member organizations to find “alternative routes” and look at “different port options.”

Garbage complications

Then there’s the change of heart happening in the Netherlands, prompted by the country’s own environmental crisis.

Slashing garbage imports is one of 18 measures announced by the Dutch government in light of a 2015 court ruling finding it wasn’t doing enough to cut greenhouse gas emissions. The court ordered the government to reduce emissions by 25 percent by 2020, compared with the government’s own program of a more modest 17 percent reduction.

The result is the trash tax proposal, which would add charges of €32 per ton of imports from January 1, 2020.

The Netherlands is the largest importer of U.K. waste, receiving 1.3 million tons of British garbage in 2018 — almost half the country's total trash exports. In an average week, that's about 25,000 tons of waste, or a truckload every 15 minutes.

“The introduction of an import tax risks more waste going to landfill in the U.K. each year,” Robert Corijn, chair of the RDF Industry Group that represents incineration plant operators, waste trade associations and exporters, said earlier this year. According to the lobby, the tax would distort the market and force waste-to-energy plant operators to lower prices — making it cheaper to dump trash in landfills.

In the Netherlands, burning less waste for fuel will help cut emissions — making the court-ordered target easier to reach.

But any gain in carbon dioxide reductions in the Netherlands would be more than offset by methane emissions if that same garbage ends up in landfills in the U.K. Methane, which is released by rotting waste, is a more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2.

The U.K. government has said that even after Brexit, it will respect stringent new EU regulations setting a limit of only 10 percent of household waste going to landfill by 2035. Currently around 20 percent is sent to landfill (down from 80 percent in 2001).

That promise could be difficult to square with the likely surge of garbage trapped in the country.

This article is part of POLITICO’s Sustainability Pro service, which dives deep into sustainability issues across all sectors, including: circular economy, waste and the plastics strategy, chemicals and more. For a complimentary trial, email pro@politico.eu mentioning Sustainability.