Pre-treatment

What the Environment Agency
expects from industry
The Environment Agency wants waste producers to take responsibility for their waste and make simple improve-ments in resource and waste management to deliver a better environment.

Many wastes currently landfilled are already treated beforehand and therefore already comply with the law. Even in these cases it is still good practice to consider if there are cost-effective ways to increase the amount of waste that is recovered and hence not sent for landfill.

There are many straightforward ways to treat waste that give real environmental benefits. For example, by collecting waste streams separately and recycling one or more of the separated components.

Under the pre-treatment requirements, no landfill site will be able to accept waste unless it has been pre-treated. Your waste will have been considered to be pre-treated if:-
(i) it has undergone a physical, thermal or biological process including sorting that
(ii) also changes the characteristics of the waste and
(iii) must do so in order to reduce its mass, or reduce its hazardous nature or facilitate its handling or enhance its recovery.

For general waste, this means that a proportion of each waste stream must be separated out for recycling or it must go through a sorting facility.

Landfill Tax
In the recent budget, the Chancellor confirmed that the landfill tax escalator, will increase to £8/tonne each year until 2013.

This will mean that landfill tax will rise to £40/tonne in April 2009 and will rise to £72/tonne in April 2013.

Recycling your waste will therefore not only meet the pre-treatment requirement, but will also dramatically reduce your waste costs over the next 4 years.