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

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� In Scotland, there are 31 Unitary Authorities. For the purposes of waste
management, these 31 authorities formed groupings known as Waste Strategy
Areas, of which there are 11;
� In Northern Ireland, there are 26 unitary authorities. These have formed 3
Groupings for the purposes of waste management. However, it should be
noted that now that the Northern Ireland Assembly is ‘active’ (after many years
in suspended animation), a fairly major restructuring of local government is
being considered, the proposed outcome of which is consolidation of areas
which are not consistent with the borders of the Regions working together on
planning for municipal waste.
As far as waste disposal is concerned, therefore, across the UK, one could say that
there are something of the order 200 WDAs.
55.1.3 Basics of the LASs
The Waste and Emissions Trading Act 2003 essentially transposes the Landfill
Directive into UK law, and was granted Royal Assent on 13 November 2003. 1012 The
legislation gives the Secretary of State powers to impose a duty upon WDAs to ensure
that they landfill no more biodegradable municipal waste than that for which they
hold the equivalent number of landfill allowances.
Within the UK, the different devolved administrations have each adopted an approach
to meeting the Article 5 Landfill Directive targets which makes use of the allocation,
to local authorities, of a diminishing (over time) number of allowances for the disposal
of biodegradable municipal waste to landfill. Biodegradable municipal waste (BMW)
has to be dealt with in ways other than landfill in line with the overall allocation of
allowances, with key target years being 2009/10, 2012/13 and 2019/20.
The details of the Landfill Allowances Schemes (LASs) in the different countries are
not the same (see Table 55-1). Notably, England and Scotland allow trading of
allowances (hence, in England, the scheme is known as the Landfill Allowances
Trading Scheme, or LATS), whilst Wales and Northern Ireland do not. In addition, for
the purposes of making mass balance calculations, the biodegradable content of
waste is assumed to be different in the different countries. 1013 Finally, as a point of
technical detail, the quantity of BMW landfilled can be reduced either through
sending less material to landfill or through reducing the biodegradability of waste
which is landfilled. The approach to measuring loss in biodegradability is different in
Scotland to the approach in the other administrations of the UK.
It is clearly a simplification to believe that all local authorities will have similar waste
composition. Indeed, the fact that the composition of waste in the different devolved
1012 Waste and Emissions Trading Act 2003, Part 1: Waste, 13 th November 2003.
1013 Work is ongoing in Defra to estimate the current biodegradable content of waste in England, and a
review has also taken place in Northern Ireland. Our understanding is that latest estimates suggest a
downward shift in biodegradable content in both areas. We are not, however, able to make use of this
data at this stage as it is not in the public domain.
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