Biodegradable municipal waste

Biodegradable municipal waste (BMW) is the fraction of municipal waste that will degrade within a landfill, giving rise to landfill gas emissions, primarily methane.  It includes, amongst other materials, food waste, green waste, paper and cardboard.

Targets for BMW permitted to landfill

The Landfill Directive (1999/31/EC) aims to reduce, as far as possible, the negative effects of landfilling waste.  It sets targets and timescales for reducing the amount of BMW sent to landfill and from this the UK government has identified the maximum amount of BMW that the UK can landfill for certain target years up to 2019/2020.  A proportion of these targets have been allocated to Scotland as follows:

In order to help reach the 2009/2010 target, interim targets for Scotland were set for 2005/2006 to 2008/2009:

Meeting the targets

Figures show that Scotland has met the targets for 2005/2006 and 2006/2007. Details on the quarterly and annual data are available here:

•  Municipal waste reporting

The Landfill Allowance Scheme helps Scotland achieve its national targets.  Under this scheme, every Scottish local authority is allocated an allowance to landfill no more than a specified amount of BMW in a given year.  More information is available in the related items.

As the monitoring authority for the Landfill Allowance Scheme, SEPA calculates the quantity of BMW landfilled quarterly and annually using municipal data collected via WasteDataFlow.  This is done using a mass-balance calculation which assumes an initial factor of 63% for the biodegradable content of collected municipal waste.  Details of the methodology used are in the Scottish Government’s guidance available opposite.