The government has cast doubt over the future of the Landfill Allowance Trading Scheme beyond 2013 as it today (September 8) published the responses to a consultation on how to meet EU Landfill Directive targets in future.
The document was published alongside responses to a consultation on introducing landfill bans or restrictions in England and Wales (see letsrecycle.com story) and came as the government also confirmed that the UK has met its 2010 Landfill Directive target.
However, the government explained that reporting of progress towards meeting Landfill Directive targets was set to change, due in part to a broadening of the definition of municipal waste to cover more commercial and industrial material (see letsrecycle.com story).
As a result, when the consultation was launched in March 2010, it asked for opinions of how progress towards the targets should be reported in future, including on what should happen to LATS, the WasteDataFlow database and how to measure all municipal waste diverted from landfill.
Commenting on this, the majority of respondents said they considered Landfill Tax now to be a greater driver to divert waste from landfill – raising questions over the future merit of LATS.
Writing in its response, the government said: “It is clear that there is a range of views about the future of LATS, with a number of respondents considering that it should be abandoned immediately, others wanting this to happen after the 2013 target year and others wanting LATS to be retained until 2020.”
And, while Defra said it would continue to assess the options in the context of its wider review of waste policies, it added that: “The responses gathered from this consultation will inform further work, including consideration of the future of Landfill Allowance Trading Scheme beyond 2013. Given this, local authorities may need to carefully consider whether they wish to enter into trading of Landfill Allowance Trading Scheme (LATS) allowances after this time.”
The Department added said it understood that some local authorities' had concerns that ending the scheme could undermine ongoing procurement processes for necessary infrastructure while others highlighted the “benefits of focusing further up the waste hierarchy”.
Measure
Elsewhere in its response, the government said it intended to measure biodegradable municipal waste at the point of landfill, using landfill operator returns, for which there was broad support. It said: “We will consider further how to improve the quality and robustness of monitoring in this way.”
On this issue, it said it would fund research to provide a better understanding of biodegradable content of mixed municipal waste at landfill sites.
The government also said it planned to retain the WasteDataFlow database, explaining that “the data gathered through this system is used for a number of other purposes in addition to its role in relation to the Landfill Allowance Trading Scheme and landfill diversion targets.”
Finally, it also proposed that the term “local authority collected municipal waste” would be used to refer to the municipal element of waste collected by local authorities.
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