Report

Environmental measures for the primary metals industry

This report reviews the extent to which the Dutch primary metals industry has implemented Best Available Technology (BAT), as defined in the Euro-pean Union’s BAT Reference Documents (BREFs), with specific focus on those emissions for which Dutch Integrated Environmental Targets (IETs) for the year 2000 have still not been secured: atmospheric emissions of fluoride, fine particulates, lead, chromium, cadmium and mercury and sur-face-water emissions of mercury and cadmium. These targets were speci-fied in a Memorandum of Intent drawn up several years ago by the industry and government. The present study analyses the bottlenecks currently hampering further emissions reductions and recommends measures to ad-dress them.
The study shows that the five companies investigated (which together ac-count for the bulk of sectoral emissions) are operating in compliance with BAT as laid down in the European BREFs. That the IETs have not been fully achieved, despite implementation of BAT, is due mainly to inaccura-cies in the 1985 reference data. To achieve the IETs for the cited pollutants will require substantial investments (>270 M€) and for fluoride, particularly, there is still a long way to go. The results of this study are to serve as input for a government memorandum outlining new policy on Corporate Envi-ronmental Programmes.

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