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

Netherlands and Sweden. One might argue, therefore, that the principle switch
achieved by this is one from landfill to incineration.
The key driver for the implementation of regulatory bans on biowaste comes from the
desire to reduce problems associated with methane generation at landfills, or (which
amounts to much the same thing) to meet landfill directive targets. Note that no
equivalent driver has been found in any state outside of Europe. The European
countries that have landfill bans in place that specifically target biodegradable waste,
are Austria, Finland, Germany, Belgium, France, Sweden, Czech Republic, and
Slovenia. The benefit from eliminating such materials from landfill may be significant
considering the propensity of biodegradable wastes to generate methane in the
anaerobic conditions that occur in landfills.
The effectiveness of a landfill ban can relate to the notice given by the relevant
government before the implementation of the ban. Essentially, if not enough time is
given infrastructure does not have time to develop and infringements are likely to
occur. This is discussed further in the Section 52.12. Of course, where a lead time is
used, it does make any assessment of the effectiveness of a ban more difficult to
assess.
The level of detailed data that could be used to perform a thorough ex-post evaluation
of a number of landfill tax mechanisms is simply not available. We have therefore
pulled together sparse information from relevant reports and highlighted some of the
important issues.
To determine what environmental benefits are associated with a landfill tax, one
study sought to understand whether there is a relationship between the level of the
tax and the proportion of waste landfilled in that country. Figure 52-9 shows that, at a
glance, no relationship exists between landfill tax levels and municipal waste
landfilled. However, the combination of waste policies in each of the countries, and
specific intentions of the landfill tax, are different, making such a univariate analysis
almost useless. For example, one of the clear outliers is Germany (DE), with a low
level of municipal waste landfilled but no landfill tax. In Germany the Ordinance on
Landfilling of waste significantly restricts landfilling, and has had a significant effect in
reducing the quantity of waste landfilled. Equally, to take the view that the tax is
responsible for the low levels of landfilling in Netherlands and Denmark would be to
miss the influence of the landfill bans in those countries.
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International Review of Waste Policy: Annexes