Filled with enthusiasm for LATS

22 November 2006

The first year of the landfill allowance trading scheme has been declared a success, with councils collectively landfilling almost one-fifth less than they were permitted to.
But, while the Environment Agency declared the 2005/06 statistics suggested that councils were on track to meet the first LATS targets in 2009/10, and therefore escape financial penalties, it acknowledged that the 2013 targets would be much tougher.
The EA was pleased that in the scheme’s first year, municipal waste had fallen by 3%, landfilled tonnages decreased by at least two million tonnes, and recycling rose to 27%. It was also pleased that the 10 waste disposal authorities with a deficit of allowances had got to grips with ‘the world’s first trading scheme of its kind’ by buying or borrowing allowances, said Martin Brocklehurst, the EA’s head of waste management.
‘The operation of the allowance scheme is a success, and the trend line is in the right direction – there’s every reason to believe that we can meet the 2009/10 targets.’ But Cllr Paul Bettison at the Local Government Association stressed that ‘there is still a lot of hard work to be done’ to cut the amount of biodegradable waste sent to landfill sites by 1.2M in just three years.
This was underlined by the fact that four out of the top 20 biggest WDAs – Surrey and Kent county councils, North London Waste Authority and Merseyside WDA – were within 5% of having an allowance deficit in the scheme’s first, easiest, year. Brocklehurst acknowledged that, while the 2009/10 targets could be achieved by relatively simple actions, such as increasing recycling and composting, waste-treatment facilities would need to be operational by 2013 if 4.9M more waste was to be diverted than this year.
On average, it cost councils with deficits £16.79 to buy one spare allowance ‘tonne’, so the 10 with deficits paid £617,800 altogether – ‘the most economic means of achieving LATS in the short term’ according to Paul Borrett, chair of the National Association of Waste Disposal Authorities.

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