Landfill Allowance Scheme
The Landfill Allowance Scheme (LAS) was introduced to provide a cost effective way of enabling Scotland to meet its targets for reducing the landfilling of biodegradable municipal waste under Article 5(2) of the EC Landfill Directive. The Electronic Register of Landfill Allowances has been developed to record all allowances allocated to each local authority to facilitate the banking, borrowing and trading of allowances. The public landfill allowance register is available here.
The Landfill Allowance Scheme (Scotland) Regulation 2005 came into force in April 2005.
From April 2006 local authorities have used the web-based reporting system WasteDataFlow to report all their waste arisings, recycling and disposal. Information on WasteDataFlow is available at http://www.sepa.org.uk/nws/data/waste_data_flow.htm
In 2005/2006 an Excel form was used to collect data, the Landfill Allowance Scheme Quarterly Monitoring Return form (LASQMR). This replaced the Quarterly Recycling/Composting Return Form used during the pilot year 2004/2005.
The main purpose of collecting this data is to monitor progress towards reaching the UK's targets for the landfilling of biodegradable municipal waste (BMW) and the Scottish Ministers' targets for the recycling and composting of municipal waste. Scottish local authorities are asked every three months to report data on recycling, composting and disposal activities.
The Scottish Executive recently amended in March 2007 the Landfill Allowance Scheme (Scotland) Regulation 2005: Guidance to notify individual local authorities of their allocation of allowances and to provide definitions and clarification on the scheme. Local authorities must ensure that they hold sufficient allowances to cover the actual amount of BMW that they intend to landfill in any financial year. The full document for the Landfill Allowance Scheme (Scotland) Regulation 2005: Final Guidance March 2007 can be viewed here:
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2007/04/18110606/0
Collected Municipal waste is defined in the Guidance as all waste for which the council makes arrangements, with exceptions, mainly industrial waste. The full definition and the exceptions are outlined in paragraph 3 of the Guidance and can be viewed here:
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2007/04/18110606/3
Data for individual quarters and for the ‘rolling year’ can be accessed by clicking on the appropriate links below. The ‘rolling year’ data aggregates the last four quarters’ returns and is the best means of comparison for annual data as it eliminates seasonal factors. The recycling/composting rate calculated from the rolling year data should be used when checking progress towards meeting the recycling/composting targets. Please note the tonnages for the recycling/composting rate are counted when they are sent to the reprocessors and the arisings are referring to the total of the waste sent to treatment.
