East Riding Council Waste Trade

£1.2 MILLION HAS BEEN SPENT over the last 4 years by the East Riding Council on disposing of waste in other local authorities landfill sites reports the Hull Daily Mail.

The newspaper reports that East Riding Council has spent £1.2m on disposing of municipal waste in this way since the Landfill Allowance Trading Scheme - or LATS - began.

Under the LATS scheme the Council has paid to obtain permits to dispose of waste elsewhere in the country. They have been prompted to do this to avoid paying Government fines for going over targets for the amount of waste they are allowed to dispose of at their own landfill sites.

The LATS scheme enables those authorities exceeding their targets to legitimately dispose of their surplus to other Councils that are well within their targets. Disposing of surplus waste in this way is cheaper (approx £14 per tonne) than paying the Government fines (approx £150 per tonne). 

Of course by spending money on obtaining LATS permits rather than paying Government fines does save the Council money, but does not address the underlying problem: More needs to be done to improve recycling rates and reduce the amounts of waste sent to landfill.

The Mail cites an Audit Commission report warning that the UK's landfill sites will be full to capacity in just six years unless current practices change. But Local HOTI campaigners will be alarmed by the Mail article's assertion that the region is particularly dependent on landfill, because it has no incinerator.

Source: Hull Dail Mail

Other information: 

Landfill Allowance Trading Scheme

East Riding Council Recycling

HOTI - Blog Post on Opposing the Incinerator demonstration