Councils meeting landfill targets
December 2, 2010 8:03 AM
Most councils in England are meeting the targets set by the government to cut down on landfill.
In their annual report on the Landfill Allowance Trading Scheme (LATS), the Environment Agency say that in 2009/10, English local authorities sent 8.4 million tonnes of Biodegradable Municipal Waste (BMW) to landfill - one million tonnes less than the previous year.
The LATS scheme allows councils to buy and sell credits. For example if a council was landfilling less than the quota set for it by the government it could sell its surplus allowance to a council which was landfilling more than its quota. Any council which landfilled too much and wasn't able to buy credits would have to pay a hefty fine.
Nationally we're well in credit - the 8.4 million tonnes actually landfilled compares with 11.2 million tonnes of allocated permits. However some local authorities were in the red - this year 13 councils in England bought allowances worth over £2 million to meet their LATS obligations.
Five years on from the start of the LATS scheme, the amount of BMW sent to landfill in England has dropped from 12.4 to 8.4 million tonnes.
However the level of allocations will continue to drop in future years so future amounts of landfill will also have to reduce.
Figures for Wiltshire were an allocation of 93,000 tonnes compared with 81,000 tonnes landfilled.
Some of our neighbours were less efficient - Gloucestershire and South Glos were on the wrong side of the balance sheet.
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