The county, which has a gleaming new network of waste recovery and recycling facilities after a ten-year investment programme (see letsrecycle.com story), has already parted with 138,000 tonnes of its allocation of 361,997 tonnes worth of landfill allowances for this financial year.
” We have made a decision to look at supporting the trading of the allowances such that whilst doing it at acceptable cost, we're not taking advantage.“
– Clare Saunders, Hampshire CC
Hampshire has also already sold 20,000 tonnes worth of its allocation for the next financial year – 2006/07 – to Kingston-upon-Hull.
The largest proportion of Hampshire's allowances went to Merseyside, which has taken on 100,000 tonnes of extra landfill allowances from Hampshire for 2005/06. A spokesperson for the Merseyside Waste Disposal Authority confirmed that the allowances were traded at 20 per tonne.
LATS
The trading comes under the government's Landfill Allowance Trading Scheme (LATS), which sets disposal authorities a certain amount of allowances for the tonnage of biodegradable municipal waste they can send to landfill each year. The number of allowances in the UK as a whole is being reduced by the government to cut landfill volumes in line with European Landfill Directive targets in 2010, 2013 and 2020 (see letsrecycle.com report).
Under LATS, councils can buy or sell allowances with each other, depending on their own needs. They can also “bank” their own allowances for use in future years, or “borrow” a limited number of future allocations of allowances for use in an earlier year.
England's smallest county, Rutland, has already become the first authority to “borrow” allowances, taking 508 tonnes from its 2006/07 allocation of 10,158 tonnes to use in 2005/06.
Availability
Experts suggest the 20 per tonne price seen in trading so far demonstrates the high availability of allowances in the first few years of the 15-year scheme, which began in April. Theoretically, the price of landfill allowances could be anything up to 150 per tonne – the level of the penalty Defra is threatening councils that landfill over the number of allowances they hold.
The buyers for Hampshire's allowances were mostly in the North of England – Darlington and Kingston-upon-Hull as well as Merseyside. Typically recycling rates are lower in the North, which has more landfill capacity than in the south of England.
 Hampshire has landfill allowances available for trading because of its new network of waste recycling and recovery facilities |
Cornwall county council is the only authority from the south that has purchased allowances from Hampshire, but councils including Dorset believe they will have to purchase some allowances.
With prices at the 20 per tonne level, the trading brings in close to 3 million income for Hampshire, but the county is keen to stress that it is not looking to take financial advantage of other councils' high landfill needs.
Clare Saunders, assistant waste manager at Hampshire, explained: “We have made a decision to look at supporting the trading of the allowances such that whilst doing it at acceptable cost, we're not taking advantage, but are meeting the spirit of the scheme in early benefit from the investment made in new infrastructure.”
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