LAWR

April 2014 Local Authority Waste & Recycling 11 LANDFILL MANAGEMENT Landfill tax has certainly had a considerable impact on the waste management sector as we know it. Peter Scholes of Urban Mines analyses whether the landfill tax has a future. he increase in landfill tax to £80 per tonne this April is the lat- est in a long line of increases since the introduction of the £8 environmental tax by John Selwyn Gummer in 1996, designed to encourage waste producers to produce less waste or recover value from their waste. The imposition of the landfill tax esca- lator in the 2007 Budget by the then Chancellor Gordon Brown increased tax levels substantially from £40 in 2009-10 to £80 now (2014-15). This will make the cost of typical non-hazardous land- fill break through the £100 per tonne barrier for the first time.In the Coalition Government's Budget of 2010 George Osborne established a floor for landfill tax, declaring that the tax per tonne will not drop below the £80 mark until at least 2020. So landfill tax shouldn't decrease in the coming years, if you ignore the effects of inflation, but will it, or should it, continue to increase? Generally throughout the sector landfill tax has been seen as a good thing, probably the most effective fis- cal instrument introduced in the UK to support diversion from landfill and the more sustainable use of waste in reuse, recycling or energy generation. Operators in other European countries have expressed their admiration for the measured way in which the landfill tax has been increased, allowing time to bring forward waste treatment facili- ties, without falling into the trap of creating oversupply as has happened in Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands with some types of facilities. Landfill tax has certainly changed the way the UK manages its waste, but what overall impact does the levy continue to have? Impact on business For instance, over the period 2009 to 2012, although landfill tax increased by 60% from £40 to £64 per tonne, the quantity of non-inert waste landfilled in England and Wales reduced by only 15%, from 34.7 to 29.3 million tonnes (Source: Environment Agency). We con- tinue to landfill considerable amounts of waste. Over the same period, house- hold waste recycling rates for England increased from 39.7% to 43.2%, with only a 0.2% increase from 2011 to 2012, and 34% of waste collected by local authorities is still going to landfill (Source: Defra). So it could be argued that landfill tax is having a disproportionate impact with businesses and local authorities preferring to pay increased tax levels rather than invest in landfill diversion or increased recycling. Maybe increases in landfill tax have lost their sting. No doubt reductions in council budg- ets, plus the pressure to preferentially fund areas such as education and social care, has had the most impact on the slowing of recycling rates, along with the dropping of annual statutory recy- cling targets. Do further increases in recycling need the reinstatement of council budgets, or the re-establishment of annual targets, to reach the 50% goal by 2020, or would further increases in landfill tax force councils to pick up the recycling gauntlet again? The Local Government Association (LGA) certain- ly doesn't think so. In a time of austerity and reduced council budgets, the LGA favours a landfill-tax freeze. They say this would limit costs to local authori- ties while still providing an incentive to divert waste from landfill. The lack of alternative residual waste treatment capacity, particularly for energy recovery, has also limited the impact of landfill tax increases and subsequent landfill diversion. However, increased landfill tax rates have cer- tainly supported the development and delivery of waste treatment and recov- ery capacity for municipal waste, with many new facilities coming on line in England in 2014 and 2015. A growing number of these have incorporated a recyclate separation stage before incin- eration, potentially giving a boost to recycling rates. Landfill tax has provided much of the momentum for these pro- T The future of landfill tax The future of landfill tax

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