Legal Framework and Shared Responsibility for Waste Management

Relevant EC Directives, the Regional Development Strategy (RDS), and the Department's Waste Management Strategy for Northern Ireland (WMS) provide a strong directional framework and context for this Planning Policy Statement. The Northern Ireland Executive and national government are committed to implementing a number of Directives on waste (see Annex C). These comprise an emerging legal framework that sets out how waste must be planned for and managed in Northern Ireland. Changes in the legal, environmental and technological context require new aims, objectives and priorities to achieve sustainable waste management. They also require new attitudes, approaches and solutions across all sectors to set in train the radical change required in the management of waste. Responsibility for the sustainable management of waste does not lie solely with the Department of the Environment. It is shared by everyone – government departments and agencies, District Councils, the business sector, voluntary bodies, and by individual citizens, in this context, as generators of waste.