4. Managing Non-Municipal Solid Wastes

4.1 Introduction

Over 12 million tonnes⁵ of waste arose from Scotland's homes, shops, offices and industry in 1998. Currently, however, due to the lack of complete and robust data for all wastes, the development of the BPEO for Ayrshire, Dumfries and Galloway has initially focused on MSW which equates to almost 0.5 million tonnes of this total waste stream (see Chapter 3). This chapter focuses on all non-MSW. Currently non-MSW is regarded as all industrial wastes and all commercial wastes not collected by the local authorities.

A framework to address the management of non-MSW, which forms the largest part of the wastes produced in Scotland, has been developed through a partnership between representatives from SEPA, Scottish Executive, the enterprise community and the waste-management industry. These wastes will be a major focus for the future development of the National Waste Strategy: Scotland and the local AWPs.

The non-MSW are more complex than MSW collected by the local authorities, and significant data gaps exist. Whilst the BPEO process initially developed by SEPA has been successfully applied to MSW, it has become apparent that the process needed to be reviewed and redefined when dealing with other waste streams.

The partnership approach that is at the heart of the National Waste Strategy: Scotland development has been a success and should continue. For this reason a multi-stakeholder group was brought together to obtain preliminary views and input into a management approach for non-MSW.

The key issues for the non-MSW framework are:

• Waste Arisings Data – the lack of requirement to record and report waste arisings data that has contributed to the absence of sufficiently detailed data required to make a BPEO decision.

• Producer Behaviour – tools that are currently available and those that need to be developed further to influence the behaviour commercial and industrial waste producers to ensure the adoption of the BPEO.

• Non–MSW Plan – provision of a detailed plan to ensure that the NWSS and local AWPs deal with all controlled wastes and do not just focus on MSW.

⁵This figure does not include agricultural, mining and quarrying wastes as these are currently not controlled wastes as defined by the Environmental Protection Act 1990.