A hard Brexit could turn into a stinking problem for the British government.

The U.K. is one of the European Union's top waste exporters. It sends more than 3 million tons a year to other EU countries, accounting for over 10 percent of the U.K.'s waste that isn't reused or recycled. The mixed waste is sent abroad as refuse-derived fuel, trash that has been treated so that it can be burned for energy.

A hard break from the European Union risks creating a “potential disaster scenario,” leaving the country stuck with large amounts of garbage that it does not have the capacity to process, waste management company Suez warned last month. A related issue is dealing with a mountain of materials that can be recycled, but that the U.K. can't process itself and also exports.



“Hard borders, import tariffs and a weakening sterling will make waste exports to Europe, which the U.K. continues to rely upon, financially unviable,” said David Palmer-Jones, CEO of Suez recycling and recovery U.K.

If Brexit blocks the U.K.'s waste exports to the EU, or just makes them more expensive because of tariffs, that could hike environmental costs borne by businesses and increase the amount of trash put into landfills — the worst way to deal with waste from an environmental perspective.

Experts agree on one thing: The U.K. will have to rethink its waste policy, now shaped by the EU.

Suez, which also operates waste-to-energy plants in Britain, is urging the government to build more facilities in the country to close the "capacity gap" in residual waste treatment, especially incineration plants.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs declined to answer questions on the impact of Brexit on the U.K.'s waste exports but said the needs related to waste infrastructure are being assessed. “We recognize the need for a mix of infrastructure and this will form part of a renewed strategy on waste and resources that looks ahead to opportunities outside the EU,” a spokesperson for the department said.

On top of mixed waste exports, the U.K. exports roughly 15 million tons of recovered material for recycling (metals, paper, plastics and glass) because it lacks the capacity to reprocess the materials at home and treatment costs are lower abroad. Although most of those recyclables go to Asia, largely China, some are reprocessed in EU countries, mainly glass.

China recently announced it plans to put in restrictions on recyclable imports, something that is likely to affect the U.K. as well as other EU countries.

However, not everyone agrees with Suez's grim Brexit scenario.

“If the U.K. was to completely dissociate from the EU, we could still be exporting [refuse-derived fuel] to EU countries” using the legal framework provided by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, if at a higher cost, said Dominic Hogg, chairman of Eunomia Research and Consulting. The consultancy estimated that export volumes would remain the same and the U.K. will actually end up with an excess of residual waste treatment capacity in the next decade, thanks to improved recycling rates.

Trashing EU recycling goals

Experts agree on one thing: The U.K. will have to rethink its waste policy, now shaped by the EU, once it leaves the bloc.

The question is whether a post-Brexit U.K. will stick with EU-set recycling targets. EU countries have to recycle or reuse at least 50 percent of their municipal waste by 2020, and are now negotiating a 65 percent recycling target for 2030.

The U.K. hasn't disclosed its position on the new targets, but Therese Coffey, minister in charge of waste management at the environment department, said in 2016 that the 2030 recycling targets were “too high.” More recently, she signaled that the U.K. could move away from targets based on the weight of recycled waste, as the EU uses, and instead focus on resource efficiency.

This uncertainty comes amid concerns that Britain will fall short of the 2020 goal. Although recycling in the country has improved over the years, the rate in England dropped in 2015 for the first time in over a decade to 43.9 percent.

The Labour Party and circular economy experts want to increase recycling rather than bet on waste-to-energy.

“I don’t think we will get there, and that is the consequence of seven years of a virtual vacuum of waste policy in the U.K.,” Hogg said.

The U.K. has reduced the amount of waste sent to landfill in recent years. However, it diverted more to incineration for energy, which is not considered the most resource efficient way to deal with waste.

Operators including Suez argue that boosting waste-to-energy at home would solve two problems at once — getting rid of waste while increasing domestic energy production.

Suez thinks the message has been well-received.

“When I met with [then-Climate Change Minister] Nick Hurd, the British will was very clear,” Jean-Marc Boursier, deputy director general for recycling at Suez said in an interview. He said the government wants to bring some of the waste processing back to the U.K. from abroad and "slightly diverge" from EU targets in favor of incineration rather than recycling.



However, the opposition Labour Party and circular economy experts want to increase recycling rather than bet on waste-to-energy.

“We have got to reduce, reuse and recycle. We do not need more incineration capacity,” said David Drew, Labour’s shadow junior environment minister. “It's a nice notion that you're going to get energy from waste, but I think it's more important that we find other ways in which we produce our energy. This is really a sideshow.”