I’ve been raising the threat of regulation on the survival of waste SMEs for a couple of years now, so it is encouraging to see it raised by CIWM President Vicki Hughes in a recent podcast.
The waste industry has always evolved. That’s nothing new. But the pace of regulatory change now feels relentless: Digital Waste Tracking, Simpler Recycling, EPR, POPs, permitting changes, competency requirements…
Each one may be perfectly sensible in isolation; the problem is that businesses don’t experience them in isolation.
For a national operator with dedicated compliance teams, another regulation is another project. For an independent waste business, it’s often the owner trying to find time to understand another set of rules after they’ve finished dealing with customers, staff, vehicles, suppliers and cashflow.
I sometimes wonder whether policymakers fully appreciate the cumulative effect.
Because while the stated objective is almost always higher standards, there comes a point where the sheer weight of compliance begins to reshape the market itself. The businesses most able to absorb that burden are also the biggest.
I also wonder whether our trade bodies have challenged this hard enough. Inevitably, organisations that depend on constructive relationships with government, while receiving a significant proportion of their income from the industry’s largest businesses, can find themselves focusing on implementing policy rather than asking whether the cumulative burden is quietly changing the structure of the industry itself.
Perhaps that’s an uncomfortable thought.
But if we eventually reach a point where only a handful of national operators have the scale to cope with every new regulatory requirement, we shouldn’t pretend it was an overnight change. It will have happened one well-intentioned regulation at a time.
Standards and environmental protection both matter.
But so do competition, innovation and the local knowledge that independent operators bring to the market.
The question isn’t whether higher standards are a good thing.
It’s whether we’re prepared to accept the steady disappearance of the independent sector as the price of achieving them.
About Gerald Price
Gerald Price is a business change consultant and interim managing director specialising in business turnarounds, operational improvement and commercial performance, especially within the waste and recycling industry.
Having worked with operators across the sector, he regularly writes about leadership, strategy, waste policy and the commercial realities facing UK waste businesses.
More articles and insights can be found at www.gpcp.co.uk and https://www.linkedin.com/in/geraldprice/
