International Review of Waste Management Policy - Department of ...

necessarily clear that systems do price on the basis of landfill disposal costs, nor that
they would necessarily do so in the future. 208
The Environmental Fund allows one to review the revenue from this levy, which can
be used as part of the picture needed to assess its effectiveness. An audit of the
financial statements of the Environment Fund for the year ended the 31st December
2007 under Section 74 (6) of the Waste Management Act 1996 (as amended) was
carried out by the DoEHLG. Table 11-1 represents the amounts collected by the local
authorities in respect of the Environmental Levy on the landfill of waste from 2002 to
2007.
Table 11-1: Landfill Levy Funds 2002 - 2007
Environmental
Levy on the
Landfill of
Waste
188
29/09/09
2002 2002 2003 003 003 2004 2004 2005 2005 2006 2006 2007
2007
€17,868,726 €29,359,585 €26,765,514 €27,798,605 €30,750,433 €33,398,929
Source: Department of Environment, Heritage & Local Government, 2002 – 2007
It is apparent from the table above that the revenue earned from the landfill levy
increased between 2005 and 2006.
Various attempts to analyse the effectiveness of the landfill tax have concluded that it
has affected construction and demolition wastes (C&D), and commercial and
industrial (C&I) wastes, but that its affect on household waste has been limited thus
far. The National Waste Database Report 2006 indicates that household waste
generation increased in 2006 by 229,774 tonnes when compared with 2005 figures,
as shown in Table 3-2. This table also illustrates that the amount of waste generated
since 2001 has increased by 33%.
208 One report highlights a mean across all areas of €0.0442/kg with a maximum of 0.460/kg and a
standard deviation of €0.104/kg (J. Curtis, S. Lyons & A. O’Callaghan-Platt (2009) Managing
Household Waste in Ireland: Behavioural Parameters and Policy Options, ESRI Working Paper 295,
http://www.esri.ie/UserFiles/publications/20090728095754/WP295.pdf . However, this report
included areas without weight-based charging, so the average figure would be biased downwards by
zero values in some areas. The high end figure suggests that the pricing in weight based systems might
not always be closely related to landfill gate fees, though clearly, there may be some influence from the
gate fee through to the marginal charge rate. At the high end of this range, however – equivalent to a
€460 per tonne disposal cost – changes occasioned by changes in landfill gate fee might have a
proportionately lower additional effect than in cases where the marginal weight-based charge is
currently lower.