Landfill Allowance Trading Scheme

The Landfill Allowance Trading Scheme (LATS) and Landfill Allowance Schemes (LAS) have been developed to enable the UK to meet the Landfill Directive targets of reducing the amount of biodegradable municipal waste (BMW) being sent to landfill in a cost effective way. Reducing the amount of BMW going to landfill will reduce the amount of landfill gas released into the atmosphere and help protect the environment (Website 2).

In England LATS are used, each waste disposal authority (WDA) is allocated a landfill allowance per year for their biodegradable municipal waste.

The WDAs in England have a number of options for their landfill allowance (Website 1):

1. WDA can keep all their allowance
2. Trade their LATS allowance with other disposal authorities
3. Borrow up to 5% of their future allocation in advance
4. Bank their LATS for future years if they do not use their full allocation, this cannot occur in the target years or the year leading up to the target year. The target years for England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are 2009 - 2010, 2012-2013 and 2019- 2020 (Website 7, 8, 9).

 In Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland the scheme is known as the Landfill Allowances Scheme (LAS) with no trading between WDAs being permitted.

The Environment Agency is responsible for monitoring both the LATS and LAS performance in England and Wales. Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Website 5) are responsible for monitoring LAS in Scotland. The Northern Ireland Landfill Allowance Scheme (NILAS) is monitored by the Department of Environment and Heritage Service (Website 7).

Various tools have been developed to help local authorities calculate the amount of BMW they have sent to landfill (Website 7, 8, 9);

• In Scotland the mass balance approach has been set out in the Landfill Allowance Scheme (Scotland) Regulations 2005.
• In England Defra have developed the Mass Balance Estimator and Allowance Manager (M-BEAM), to help WDAs
• In Northern Ireland the Mass Balance Calculation is used, the calculation methodology is set out in regulations 12 and 13 of the NILAS Regulations

The amount of BMW in the solid municipal waste for monitoring purposes is estimated to be at 68% (by weight) in England and 61% (by weight) in Wales. These values are used to calculate the landfill allowance. However in practice the amount of BMW present in municipal solid waste (MSW) varies from authority to authority (Website 4).

Recording LAS and LATS data:

All local authorities are now recording their waste data on to the web-based online reporting system WasteDataFlow. WasteDataFlow is a system that was developed to help local authorities, regulators and government monitor waste statistics for the public sector.

Some key advantages of WasteDataFlow are (Website 6):

1. A more accurate data collection of municipal waste statistics;
2. Enhancement of local data management for reporting and strategic planning purposes;
3. Offering local authorities streamlined access to performance benchmarking with other authorities;
4. Monitoring progress towards national and local targets;
5. In particular to enable waste disposal authorities meet their requirement to report quarterly data to the Environment Agency under the Landfill Allowances and Trading Schemes regulations (LATS; LAS)

Also any landfill site operators which accept biodegradable municipal waste will have to provide returns to the appropriate authority. This must include information on the types and quantities of waste that they are receiving and where the municipal waste came from.

If a WDA does not provide the correct data or it fails to provide any data at all to the Environment Agency then the Environment Agency can serve a notice to the authority and this will result in the authority being fined (Website 4).

If a WDA exceeds its allocated BMW tonnage for landfill then it could receive a financial penalty for every tonne that is landfilled over the allocated allowance. If the United Kingdom as a whole does not meet the national diversion targets, then the WDAs that have gone over their allowance could be faced with an additional fine (Website 9).

References

Website 1, Defra, Landfill Allowance Trading Scheme, www.defra.gov.uk/Environment/waste/localauth/lats/index.htm (Accessed 08/02/2007)

Website 2, Environment Agency, LATS - everything you need to know, www.environment-agency.gov.uk/business/444217/444663/landfill/986852/1102546/
(Accessed 08/02/2007)

Website 3, Environment Agency, The scheme in Wales (Accessed 08/02/2007)

www.environment-agency.gov.uk/business/444217/444663/landfill/986852/987413/?lang=_e

Website 4, Environment Agency, Frequently Asked Questions, www.environment-agency.gov.uk/business/444217/444663/landfill/986852/987252/987309/?version=1&lang=_e

Website 5, SEPA, The Waste Data Strategy, Landfill Allowance Scheme, www.sepa.org.uk/nws/data/returns.htm (Accessed 08/02/2007)

Website 6, WasteDataFlow www.wastedataflow.org/ (Accessed 08/02/2007)

Website 7, DOE (2005), The landfill Allowance Scheme (Northern Ireland) regulations 2004, Interim Monitoring Guidance for District Councils, www.ehsni.gov.uk/interim_nilas_guidance_dcs_aug05_including_annexes.pdf
(Accessed 09/02/2007)

Website 8, Defra, Landfill Allowance Trading Scheme Guidance on Trading, Banking and Borrowing Landfill Allowance, www.defra.gov.uk/environment/waste/localauth/lats/pdf/lats-tradingguidance.pdf
(02/04/2007)

Website 9, SEPA, Landfill Allowance Scheme (Scotland) Regulations 2005:

SEPA Guidance on Operational Procedures
www.sepa.org.uk/pdf/guidance/waste/LAS_guidance.pdf (02/04/2007)