This year’s annual Landfill Allowances Scheme (LAS) report, published by Natural Resources Wales (NRW), has found that all local authorities in Wales were well within their landfill allowances in 2012/13.

The report, published last week (30 August), found that between 1 April 2012 and 31 March 2013, Welsh councils collectively sent 364,784 tonnes of biodegradable municipal waste (BMW) to landfill, 22 per cent less than the 470,000 tonnes of waste allowed in compliance with the government’s reduction targets.

The LAS regulations came into force on 1 October 2004 to help Wales to meet its obligations under the EU Landfill Directive. The Directive requires the amount of BMW (food, paper and garden waste) local authorities can send to landfill to be capped at 50 per cent of 1995 levels by 2013, and 35 per cent of the 1995 figure by 2020. Local authorities that exceed their allowance allocation are liable to financial penalties. According to the Welsh Government, the latest LAS figures suggest councils are making ‘good’ progress towards meeting the ‘challenging’ 2020 targets.

Report findings

The main findings of the LAS report were:

• since the first full year of the LAS in 2005/06, Wales has achieved a 57 per cent reduction in the amount of local authority BMW it sends to landfill;
• collectively, councils cut the amount of BMW sent to landfill in 2012/13 by 585,216 tonnes against the 1995 figure, resulting in a reduction of 62 per cent;
• looking at individual Local Authority performance for 2012/13, Bridgend, Carmarthenshire, Ceredigion, Denbighshire, the Isle of Anglesey, Monmouthshire, Neath Port Talbot and Powys used less than seventy per cent of their allowances; and
• Flintshire, Gwynedd, Newport, Pembrokeshire, Torfaen and Wrexham used over ninety per cent of their allowance and thus have the ‘least headroom’ to meet LAS targets for the coming years.

Reductions are ‘great achievement’

Commenting on the report, Welsh Minister for Natural Resources and Food, Alun Davies said: “[These] figures are testament to the hard work of households and local authorities across Wales who have taken time and effort to separate out valuable recyclable materials and drastically reduce the amount of biodegradable rubbish sent to landfill. However there is no room for complacency as much of this material could still be recycled.

“Much of what we throw away is actually a valuable resource. We must keep working together to reduce the amount of waste we generate, and increase the amount of waste we reuse and recycle and reduce. That is the real key to ensuring that we drastically reduce the amount we send to landfill in order to meet the challenging targets ahead."

Chief Executive of Natural Resources Wales, Emyr Roberts, added: “Reducing the amount of waste sent to landfill has a positive impact on the environment, and the latest reductions by our Local Authorities are a great achievement.

“Landfill is the least preferred option for disposing of waste and even when landfill sites are closed, they pose a problem for future generations. Sending waste to landfill squanders our limited natural resources which could have otherwise been reused, recycled or recovered for energy instead, providing both environmental and economic benefits.”

The report follows on from last week’s news that local authorities in Wales reached the country’s first self-imposed statutory target of recycling 52 per cent of waste in 2012/13.

Read the Landfill Allowances Scheme in Wales 2012/13 report.