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

The reason for this is that the competition for waste services reduces the security
which any developer of more capital intense facilities might have that waste will come
into the facility in the quantity and manner desired. In essence, investments are more
risky than they are in the case – as with municipal waste – where flows of waste can
be more or less guaranteed under long-term contracts.
In order for developers to have some certainty that waste will flow into specific
facilities, the economic conditions must be right. The lack of increase (in real terms)
in landfill costs implied by the landfill tax in the period to 2003-04 can partly explain
what would appear – at least at the UK level - to be a lack of any very strong shift
from landfill to other treatments as a result of the tax. This may have changed since
2002-03 (with the increase in landfill tax escalator), but it is far more likely that
greater changes will come as the escalator increases the tax to £72 per tonne by
2013.
Pre-treatment requirements may also be encouraging segregation of wastes by
companies which have not hitherto been engaged in any such activity, although the
UK pre-treatment requirements demand minimal change on the part of most waste
producers.
With respect to household waste, the landfill tax has been far less influential in
driving waste away from landfill. The LASs have been more important in recent years.
Finland
The Ministry of the Environment assessed the effectiveness of waste tax in Finland in
a report published in 2005, which indicates that waste taxation has helped to reduce
the amounts of waste ending up in public landfills in spite of increasing consumption.
Reductions were particularly significant for construction, commercial and industrial
wastes. Taxation controls have been less effective in terms of limiting household
waste.
Sweden
A report by the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency stated that although the
amount of waste going to landfill had actually decreased, there was much doubt as to
the quantified effects of the landfill tax. 975 This was because the tax was evaluated
when it had only been in place for a short time, there was limited access to the data
that could be used for the evaluation, and waste management policy includes a
number of other instruments alongside the landfill tax.
As regards the Swedish incineration tax, a study by Sahlin et al suggested that the
incineration tax would have the largest effect on biological treatment of kitchen and
garden waste, which could increase by 9%. 976 The authors stated that the
975 Naturvårdsverket (2003) Ekonomiska styrmedel inom miljöområdet - en sammanställning. Rapport
5333, Naturvårdsverket, Stockholm.
976 J. Sahlin, T. Ekvall, M. Bisaillon and J. Sundberg (2007) Introduction of a waste incineration tax:
Effects on the Swedish waste flows, Resources, Conservation and Recycling, Volume 51, Issue 4,
October 2007, pp. 827-846.
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