England's 121 disposal authorities will have to meet strict limits on the amount of biodegradable waste they send to landfill each year through the LATS regime, the government's key measure to meet the demands of Europe's Landfill Directive.
The tradable nature of the scheme means that councils who are forced to landfill more than the allowances they hold in any one year can buy surplus allowances from other disposal authorities if surplus allowances are available.
” The early targets should allow councils to ease themselves into the scheme and the early years will probably be spent working out what allowances they will need for future years.“
– Lee Marshall, LARAC
Local authorities have spent a great deal of time preparing for LATS, and are now anxious to get started according to Lee Marshall, chair of the Local Authority Recycling Advisory Committee (LARAC).
Commenting on the scheme, Mr Marshall said: “I think that on the whole the councils are as prepared as they can be. Initially there will probably not be a huge amount of change and councils will adjust accordingly as they go. The early targets should allow councils to ease themselves into the scheme and the early years will probably be spent working out what allowances they will need for future years.”
Uncertainty
Mr Marshall told letsrecycle.com that there was still some element of uncertainty for councils in the LATS system, especially those authorities that are yet to finalise long-term waste management contracts and those waiting for major waste facilities to come online.
“For local authorities that have contracts in place, they can build facilities through these contracts knowing what targets they have to meet. But if facilities are yet to be built, there is always going to be the concern that the facility will not be built in time.”
One waste authority that could find itself in the position of having to buy allowances is Cornwall county council, which is currently in the procurement process for a waste management contract due to start next year.
”We predict that we will have landfill permits to sell. We are pretty positive about the scheme. “
– Mark Shelton, Cambridgeshire CC
Paul Martin, LATS trading officer for Cornwall, said: “We are currently tendering for an integrated waste management contract and are down to the final two bidders. The contract is unlikely to start for another year so we are unlikely to see a plant to deal with waste in the county in the next five years. Until such a plant is built we may have to buy permits.”
Mr Martin said that it was an exciting time for the UK as a whole, because all eyes would be on the unique landfill allowance trading scheme. “This is the first scheme of its kind for waste in the world – so there is an element of 'the world is watching',” he explained.
Reward
It is thought that for the first few years of the LATS regime, there will be surplus allowances available for disposal authorities to buy. Cambridgeshire county council is hoping to be one of the councils finding reward for its endeavours by selling landfill allowances.
Mark Shelton, waste policy manager at Cambridgeshire, said: “We have been planning for this for while. We have been able to implement several kerbside collection schemes and we predict that we will have landfill permits to sell. We are pretty positive about the scheme.”
Further north, Durham county council believes that it has also done enough to see it through the early part of the allowances scheme, but it will need to implement new technologies if it is to avoid having to buy permits later on, as the limits on landfill become extremely challenging post-2010.
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John Wade, waste business manager at Durham, said: “We have been developing an in-vessel plant in Durham and we are now in a position to put 30,000 tonnes of waste through it.
“We are confident of not needing to buy permits in the first year at least, but until further technologies are in place we cannot be sure how prepared we will be further down the line,” he added.
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