Landfilling of waste materials is falling but newly available landfill capacity is not keeping pace with waste deposits according to the Environment Agency. There is only 3 to 4 years of remaining landfill capacity available in London and the East of England at current rates of disposal.
Following the release of the 2004-05 waste statistics by the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency recently, the Environment Agency (EA) has now released its own stats for that year.
The 2004-05 statistics update is the first of a set of annual reports designed to make the data routinely collect from permitted sites available to help local authorities, regional planning bodies, government, and the waste management industry to plan future waste management provision.
The EA plans to supplement the publication of this annual data with periodic, comprehensive strategic waste management assessment updates as has occurred previously.
Key messages
The Agency says that the collated data provides the following key messages:
- Landfilling of wastes is down 9% since 2001 and has fallen slowly and steadily.
(One reason for this will be the increasing quantities of municipal wastes that are being composted and recycled.)
- New permits for landfill capacity have not kept pace with landfill void consumed, i.e the permitted capacity is falling.
(This perhaps reflects the business uncertainties in investing in new landfill infrastructure. There would also be expected to be a natural decline in available capacity as the need for landfill also declines, but it remains to be seen whether supply and demand keeps in balance.)
- Inputs to licensed treatment facilities have almost doubled since 2000/1.
(Again a big factor here will have been the diversion of wastes from landfill.)
- Landfill capacity for hazardous waste is in short supply and unevenly distributed.
(Again business uncertainty and hence risk will be one factor here.)
The Agency has indicated that this is the first time it has been able to report on the amount of landfill voidspace remaining at licensed sites since 2000/1. The EA estimate that there is only 3 to 4 years of remaining landfill capacity available in London and the East of England at current rates of disposal.
Unfortunately this period is considerably less than it would normally take to acquire new landfill capacity from scratch. However new capacity is already coming on line in the London area with, in particular the Belvedere Efw plant now with planning consent.
The EA's view is that returns show that inputs to the types of new facility that might be expected to replace or divert material from landfill are only increasing slowly.
Waste deposited at waste management facilities
168 million tonnes of waste was deposited at waste disposal, recovery and transfer facilities operating under Environment Agency permits on 2004/5. Of this:
> 77 million tonnes of waste went to landfill
> 7 million tonnes was incinerated, and
> 22 million tonnes went for some form of treatment.
> a further 12 million tonnes went to metal recycling
sites, and
> 46 million tonnes went to transfer facilities (most of
which will subsequently have gone to landfill)
> 3 million tonnes went to lagoons and boreholes
It should be noted that there is a degree of duplication in the figures as materials sent to transfer facilities are effectively in transit. However there may be some facilities that act in a dual role of treatment and transfer, as was the case with the Scottish statistics.
Also there will have been imports and exports to and from England and Wales as the figures represent materials received at facilities from any destination.
Categories of information provided
On its web site the Agency provides the following links to information connected with the report: