Waste Statistics Regulations
The European Union Waste Statistics Regulations (EC 2150/2002)
came into force in November 2002. It requires all Member
States to provide data to the European Commission every two years
on the generation and treatment of waste and on the number and
capacities of waste management facilities. In this context,
waste treatment covers incineration, recovery and
disposal.
The aim of the regulations is to establish a European-wide
dataset on waste generation and treatment so that, for example,
waste policies and legislation can be better monitored and
evaluated. Eurostat, the
Statistical Office of the European Communities, compiles the data
to provide statistics at the European level.
SEPA’s role is to prepare data for Scotland and send it to the
Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), who
then compile it into a UK dataset for submission to Eurostat.
The UK dataset for 2004 (the first reporting year) is
available on Defra’s website and the European dataset is available
on the Eurostat website. Data for the 2006 reporting year
were submitted to Eurostat in June 2008.
Although Member States are required to report data to the
Commission every two years, it is SEPA’s intention to compile and
publish a report for Scotland every year. These reports will
be published below, when available.
These reports show the quantity and types of waste generated and
treated in Scotland as a whole and by business sector. A
variety of data are reported, including commercial and industrial
waste, and household waste. Commercial and industrial waste
data are mainly gathered through focused studies, surveys, and
statutory data returns from licensed/permitted and exempt waste
management sites. Household data are obtained from
WasteDataFlow.
Each Member State is also required to publish a ‘quality report’
for the data. The UK quality report and those for other
Member States are available via the link in the related items.