Scotland disposes around 8 million tonnes of waste each year to landfill. It is estimated that 80% of this is waste from business.
Although the focus of planning for waste management to date has been on municipal waste, the National Waste Plan includes provisions relating to non-municipal waste in each of the Waste Strategy Areas. There is a wide range of non-municipal waste types and the development of the area plans has highlighted the need to undertake further work on these wastes.
Despite an increasing focus on waste minimisation and recycling initiatives there is a strong dependence on landfill for waste management. Landfill is now set to become an increasing cost burden to business and is an environmental burden in terms of wasting valuable resources.
Landfill Tax
There are two rates of tax:
- The lower rate - £2 per tonne (increasing to £2.50 per tonne from April 2008) for inert (inactive) waste.
- The standard rate - £24 per tonne in the 2007/08 tax year. In recent years this has been rising by £3 per year but in the April 2007 budget the escalator was increased to £8 per tonne each year from April 2008 until at least 2010/11.
(Source HM Treasury)
Scotland’s Business Waste Framework
SEPA and The Scottish Executive have jointly developed The Business Waste Framework and Action Plan and this was published on 13 March 2007. These documents can be accessed here. The background to this work and the associated papers can be accessed here.
Business Waste Action Plan
The Business Waste Action Plan includes a range of actions to be carried out by various organisations, each of which will control the publication of any resulting reports. Where available links are provided in the progress commentary of the Action Plan itself. The documents produced by SEPA NWS will be published below.
Action 3.5: Carry out research into local authority trade waste practices
Please note that, to avoid duplication, documents produced by other sections within SEPA can be found on the relevant web pages:
