The Directive on the Landfill of Waste: Two Forms of Appraisal

Abstract

This chapter discusses the development of a European Communty (EC) Directive intended to reduce the environmental damage caused by the disposal of waste by landfill, a regulatory proposal which the UK government initially supported but later opposed. The assessment of regulatory costs has two manifestations here: the UK’s own Compliance Cost Assessment (CCA), produced by the Department of Environment (DoE) in 1994, and a cost-benefit analysis (CBA) produced for the Environment Directorate (DGXI) of the European Commission. Although both documents highlight interesting issues about the estimation of costs of environmental regulation, the CBA also places these within a European context and raises questions about the distribution of costs and benefits.