The Cost of Landfilling
The use of landfill has always been the cheapest waste disposal option, but cost of landfill as a waste disposal option is rising rapidly. In the UK various regulations and a rising tax elevator will soon make landfill more expensive than the alternatives of reuse, recycle, etc.
2009 update - we are now at the tipping point! See this Bywaters Recycling Article
We have three articles on this subject:-
- UK Landfill Will Soon Become More Expensive than Waste Treatment in Waste Facilities: Written in November 2007 soon after the Comprehensive Spending Review was complete and the UK government had announced large additional funds for Waste/Resource Management Facilities, this article considers whether the PFI funding level can be increased as the government wishes and whether they should not be encouraging traditional procurement methods for many local authorities, in order to ensure these facilities can be brought on-stream in time.
- Rubbish Tax; Views about the possible introduction of a UK rubbish tax which would affect every householder by introducing charges related to the weight of the rubbish in your bin*. More..;
- The Cost of Landfill Disposal: Gate Fees for the acceptance of waste have been rising rapidly for some time now, but never more rapidly than now. Given the cost burden that this implies on industry, are we doing the right thing? Using the data from a recent paper, and considering the alternative of a seemingly inexhaustible growth in UK annual waste tonnages, the author concludes that we probably are. More..
To raise the cost of landfill is a deliberate act on the part of the UK government, as part of the UK strategy to minimise, recycle, and divert waste away from landfill, especially organic waste (which if when left in landfills leaves a particularly high impact for future generations to manage).
* - We believe that at least one UK Local authority is already effectively charging for waste disposed by householders in their district by requiring extra bags to be bought from the Council for their weekly collection if they exceed the normal bag quota. The cost of the bags is such that this does already impose in effect a “tax” on all those households which generate large volumes of “black bag” rubbish.
If you have comments, please do: Contact Us.
The Cost of Waste Collection
Table 2 shows the widely varying cost of waste collection throughout the EU.
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