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

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� Separately collected waste fit for material recovery or recycling, except some
types of biowaste if they have a caloric value of above 11.500 kJ/kg and used
for the creation of renewable energy;
� Unsorted industrial waste; and
� Unsorted household waste.
Moreover, a tax is levied on any waste where BAT for sorting exists. The tax is
differentiated in relation to the level of sorting carried out, thus strongly incentivising
source segregated separation and recycling. Consequently Belgium has one of the
highest recycling rates in the world. Additionally, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and the
Catalonia region of Spain, all have some form of taxation or banning policy in place.
Considering Denmark’s desire to use EfW to generate heat for its district heating
networks, it seems likely that this tax could just be a revenue raiser for the
government’s budget.
Interestingly, if one refers back to Table 52-1, several of the countries with high
recycling rates, but high incineration, have a policy mechanism for discouraging EfW,
and none of the countries with high recycling and low incineration do. In fact they all
have relatively low landfill taxes as well. This most probably indicates that taxation of
residual treatments is an effective means to promote the switching of waste between
treatments, but that other policy mechanisms are more effective at promoting
material recovery and recycling.
52.5.7 Commercial and Industrial Wastes
The data for commercial and industrial waste is generally less comprehensive than
for municipal wastes, and sometimes non-existent. Thus there has been very little
reference to C&I wastes in any of the evaluation studies queried. So this section will
take an overview of what are considered to be the important issues and highlight the
small points from literature where applicable.
C&I businesses have waste collection by private waste collection companies and are
generally charged by weight or volume of waste collected. Waste collection
companies will pass the price of an increase in landfill taxation directly through to
them by increasing, for example, the cost per tonne of waste collected. This gives a
direct signal to the business that it must reduce the amount of waste that it produces.
Ecotec report that in England:
29/09/09
‘There is some evidence that the landfill tax has had an effect on the disposal
of commercial and industrial waste.’
This was relating to a survey of firms which suggested that the introduction of the
landfill tax stimulated waste minimisation and recycling activities. Such evidence has
been backed up by work undertaken for the Environmental Technology Best Practice
programme, a UK Government initiative that provides free advice to industry on
GHG performance vis-à-vis recycling, or because of it’s net social cost, could be strictly classed as
discouraging disposal in some cases and recovery in others.