Problems and Prospects of Legal Regulation of the Federal State Information System for Accounting and Control of Waste Management of Hazard classes I and II

Razov Pavel Sergeevich Postgraduate Student, Department of Applied Law, MIREA - Russian Technological University 117342, Russia, Moscow region, Moscow, Obrucheva str., 46 5avel1307@mail.ru

IntroductionThe relevance of the study is due to the inclusion of the ideas of greening production and consumption among the strategic goals of the development of modern states.

In particular, the Sustainable Development Goals proclaimed by the UN General Assembly in 2015 require, among other things, ensuring rational consumption and production patterns; taking urgent measures to combat climate change; protecting and restoring terrestrial ecosystems, etc. At the state level in the Russian Federation in 2020, the President approved 5 national development goals of Russia until 2030, including: preservation of the population, health and well-being of people; a comfortable and safe environment for life.

The objectives of achieving the above goals necessitate a scientifically based transformation of the waste management system, including waste of hazard classes I and II.

Many works have been devoted to the study of the legal regulation of hazardous waste management in the domestic legal science. At the same time, many key monographic studies were conducted at the beginning of the XXI century, and therefore require updating. The most significant contribution to the development of scientific ideas about the model of waste management regulation was made by E.F. Raimova ^[15], S. Yu Selivanovskaya ^[16] and T.A. Titova ^[18]. T.I. Gizzatullin worked on issues of international legal regulation of transboundary movement of hazardous waste ^[1]. Also, a comparative analysis of legislation in this area was carried out by V.S. Stepanenko ^[17]. O. L. Radchik ^[14] revealed the issues of responsibility for violation of waste management rules.

Thus, the development of the presented topic is expedient due to the need to update scientific ideas on the legal regulation of waste management, including the use of digital technologies in this process. Also, expediency is determined by the objectives of achieving national development goals.

The purpose of the study is to identify the problems of legal regulation of the Federal State Information System for Accounting and Control of waste management of hazard classes I and II and to propose promising directions for its improvement.

The theoretical significance lies in generalizing the results of management practice and determining the basis of this model for the implementation of a system that includes legal, organizational and informational components. The practical significance lies in determining the directions for improving the legal regulation of the system under consideration – the introduction of the principle of openness and the introduction of smart contract tools.

Scientific novelty is determined by the selected areas of use of the system in question in order to implement the principles of waste management.

Main part and resultsAs already noted, the environmental agenda currently determines the internal policy of individual states and the consolidation of their efforts in the struggle for a comfortable living environment.

The economic activity of some organizations without sufficient attention to the environmental safety of the production process has led to major environmental disasters.

For example, in 2020, public authorities attempted to eliminate the harm caused by the activities of LLC Usolekhimprom (Usolye-Sibirskoye, Irkutsk region) to bring 104.3 tons of toxic chemicals, 600 tons of mercury and others to a safe state ^[10]. The Krasny Bor landfill in St. Petersburg also has significant environmental damage, from whose activities 176,004 tons/year of pollutants were released into the atmosphere ^[11].

Taking into account the need to eliminate such threats, the President in 2021 noted: "The efforts of every level of government, business, development institutions, the Russian Academy of Sciences should be subordinated to the main, central task – improving the quality of life of our people. And here, I emphasize, our approaches in the field of environmental protection are absolutely principled and, of course, are not subject to revision" ^[13].

One of the directions of environmental protection is the prevention of harmful effects of production and consumption waste. The legal basis of the relevant activity is Federal Law No. 89-FZ of June 24, 1998 "On Production and Consumption Waste".

According to Article 4.1 of the said Federal Law, waste, depending on the degree of negative impact on the environment, is divided into five hazard classes, where waste of Class I and II is extremely dangerous and highly hazardous waste.

The criteria for classifying waste into hazard classes are defined by Order No. 536 of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Ecology of the Russian Federation dated December 4, 2014. Such criteria are the degree of danger of waste to the environment and the multiplicity of dilution of aqueous extract from waste, in which there is no harmful effect on hydrobionts.

By Order No. 242 of the Federal Service for Supervision of Natural Resources Management dated May 22, 2017, information on identified waste was systematized in the Federal Waste Classification Catalog. So, asbestos dust and fiber, condensed mercury, etc. can be attributed to class I waste, and class II waste – waste from sulfuric acid purification of mineral oils (acid tar), alkaline electrolyte, spent during the production of hydrogen by electrolytic method, etc.

Significant environmental damage from such waste of hazard classes I and II (hereinafter referred to as waste) requires special attention to the regulation of their handling. For this reason, the powers in the field of handling such waste belong, in accordance with article 5 of the above-mentioned law, to the jurisdiction of the Russian Federation. At the same time, Article 14.4 of the Federal Law "On Production and Consumption Waste" establishes the specifics of waste management, the collection of which requires:

1) whether waste producers own or otherwise legally dispose of waste disposal facilities and/or dispose of waste or involve a federal waste management operator;

2) accounting for the federal waste management scheme (hereinafter referred to as the Scheme).

It should be noted that the relevant features were established in the Federal Law only in 2019. The explanatory note to the bill stated that its purpose is "to create a modern waste management system and ensure environmental safety" ^[2]. These changes were supposed to systematize the movement of hazardous waste within the framework of the Scheme, to fix the principle of professionalism in waste management.

Another significant change in the Federal Law "On Production and Consumption Waste" in 2019 was the introduction by Federal Law No. 225-FZ of July 26, 2019 of the State Information System for Accounting and Control of Waste Management of Hazard Classes I and II. Federal Law No. 356-FZ of July 2, 2021 changed the name of the specified system to "Federal State Information System for Accounting and Control of Waste Management of Hazard Classes I and II" (hereinafter referred to as the System).

The introduction of the System was supposed to solve the problem of the lack of traceability of waste movement and integrate this information with the Scheme. As A.S. Petrova notes, "currently in Russia there is no summary information on the available capacities of hazardous waste treatment, disposal and neutralization facilities" ^{[12, p. 204]}. Moreover, the high value of the implementation of the System is due to the need to consolidate information about the activities of existing waste generators, of which there are about 40 thousand in Russia ^[9]. Also, the arguments in favor of the introduction of the System were the situation of concealment by waste producers of the real volumes of waste generated ^[19].

The legal status of the System is defined by Article 14.3 of the Federal Law "On Production and Consumption Waste" and is disclosed in the Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation dated 18.10.2019 No. 1346 "On Approval of the Regulations on the Federal State Information System for Accounting and Control of Waste Management of Hazard Classes I and II".

The system in question was created for the purpose of providing information for waste management activities, while it contains information about waste, the Scheme necessary for adjustment and other information provided for by the legislation of the Russian Federation. The solution of the set tasks ensures the improvement of the waste management system.

Based on the results of the analysis of management activities, the author identifies a set of measures for the formation and commissioning of the System, including the following components:

1) legal, involving amendments to legislation and the adoption of subordinate regulations (federal laws No. 225-FZ of July 26, 2019 and No. 356-FZ of July 2, 2021, Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation No. 1346 of 18.10.2019 and other acts were adopted);

2) organizational, involving the definition of the System operator, the definition of its powers (in accordance with federal law and paragraph 2 of the Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation dated 18.10.2019 No. 1346, the system operator is the federal waste management operator – FSUE "Enterprise for Radioactive Waste Management "RosRAO" on the basis of the decree of the Government of the Russian Federation dated 14.11.2019 No. 2684-r).

3) informational, which implies filling the implemented system with the necessary information, establishing the principles of interaction of this system with other information resources.

Taking into account the goals outlined in the law, the System has become a factor in streamlining state management of waste management. Today, the scientific community positively assesses all kinds of manifestations of digitalization of public administration in various fields ^[20], including in the field of waste management ^{[3; 5; 21]}.

The use of such digital waste management control tools ensures the implementation of some economic and legal principles of waste management at a more advanced level ^[7], including:

1) the implementation of the "polluter pays" principle is ensured by ensuring the traceability of information on the activities of waste collectors;

2) the implementation of the principle of economic incentives can be improved by using accurate and comprehensive information about waste accumulation sites, their capacity, processing facilities, disposal, disposal, waste disposal, etc. when making management decisions;

3) the implementation of the proximity principle is ensured by integrating the Scheme and the System (since the Scheme is part of the System and accumulates information about the availability of nearby waste disposal sites).

In general, the creation of the System ensures the implementation of another national development goal – "digital transformation". We agree that the use of digital technologies for collecting and processing information, coupled with the introduction of modern waste processing technologies, can become a factor in the creation of a new innovative knowledge–intensive branch of the real sector of the economy - the industry for the disposal and neutralization of industrial waste ^[4].

In addition, the creation of a centralized system corresponds to the idea of individual researchers who share the position on the need to combine the main functions and tasks in this area within a single management entity with the transfer of functions for the management of such a system to it ^{[8, p. 361]}. In other areas of management, a large number of such systems of a narrowly focused nature have been created at present, which "have a limited number of users and ensure the fulfillment of special tasks of a separate body and organizations subordinate to it" ^{[6, p. 142]}. In this regard, the introduction of the Federal State Information System for Accounting and Control of Waste Management of hazard classes I and II took into account the experience of creating such resources (for example, the system of state accounting and control of radioactive substances and radioactive waste).

At the same time, according to the results of the analysis of the above-mentioned NPAs, the author identified some problems. Thus, paragraph 2 of Part 4 of Article 8 of Federal Law No. 149-FZ of July 27, 2006 "On Information, Information Technologies and Information Protection" establishes that access to information on the state of the environment (environmental information) cannot be restricted. At the same time, in accordance with paragraph 9 of the Regulation approved by the Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation dated 18.10.2019 No. 1346, a limited number of persons have the right to access information within the System. We believe that this system should have an open part of depersonalized data, which will provide the possibility of civil control over waste management. This will not contradict the federal law, since in accordance with part 5 of Article 14.3 of the Federal Law "On Production and Consumption Waste", information about waste generated as a result of activities to ensure the defense of the country and the security of the state is not subject to placement in the system.

In addition, a promising direction for improving the System is the modernization of ways to include information in the system. Currently, paragraph 15 of the Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation dated 18.10.2019 No. 1346 provides for the provision of information by sending electronic documents using the system. We believe that in the conditions of digitalization of economic processes, it is advisable to consider the possibility of using smart contract technologies to provide information to the System when appropriate management actions are carried out automatically as part of the execution of a preset algorithm.

ConclusionThe introduction of the Federal State Information System for Accounting and Control of Waste Management of hazard classes I and II corresponds to the idea of digital transformation of public administration.

The system under consideration at the present stage has become a factor in the streamlining of state management in the field of waste management.

By introducing this system into management practice, public administration entities implemented a set of measures in 2019, including the necessary legal, organizational and informational components. Taking into account such an integrated approach, the system under consideration should ensure the effective implementation of the "polluter pays" principle, the principle of economic incentives and the proximity principle.

At the same time, at the present stage, there are directions for improving this system – increasing its openness to ensure the possibility of civil control over the sphere of waste management and the use of up-to-date digital technologies, including smart contract technologies that provide automatic transmission of information to the system.