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Treatment of Non-hazardous wastes for landfill

What is the requirement?

From 30th October 2007, non-hazardous waste must be treated before it can be landfilled. This requirement stems form the Landfill Directive, which aims to reduce our reliance on landfill as a waste management option and minimise the environmental impact of landfill sites.

Who is affected?

Landfills cannot accept untreated waste. Waste producers therefore have a choice. They can treat the waste themselves or ensure that it is treated elsewhere before being landfilled.

The Landfill Directive

The new rules are a result of a European – wide requirement in the Landfill Directive, applied by the Landfill (England and Wales) Regulations 2002. The Landfill Directive is intended to reduce our reliance on landfill and ensure that any future landfilling has less impact on our health and the environment. These aims will be achieved in a number of ways. The requirement to treat waste before it is landfilled is just one of them.

Key points of compliance

A treatment option must comply with the definition of treatment. This involves a ‘three-point test’ against which you must assess the proposed treatment option:

It must be a physical, thermal, chemical or biological process including sorting.
It must change the characteristics of the waste: and
It must do so in order to:
a. Reduce its volume; or
b. Reduce its hazardous nature; or
c. Facilitate its handling; or
d. Enhance its recovery.

Some wastes being landfilled may already be the product of a treatment process. You do not have to provide additional treatment for such wastes.

There are, some, very limited, exceptions to the need for treatment because there are sometimes no treatments available that would contribute towards the aim of the Directive.

These exceptions are;

It is inert waste for which treatment is not technically feasible
It is waste other than inert waste and treatment would not reduce its quantity or the hazards that it poses to human health or the environment

Interpretation of the three-point test

The purpose of treatment is to:

Reduce the amount of waste going to landfill
Reduce the impact of waste when it is landfilled

It is for waste producers and their managers to satisfy landfill operators that waste has been treated and this means meeting the 3-point test. All three need to be satisfied.

The following principles should help in applying the test:

All of the waste must have been treated. Collection services that mix treated and untreated waste are not meeting the new requirement and all the waste will need further treatment before landfill. In many cases it will be easier to pretreat the waste before collection or undertake separate collection rounds. If the treatment option is to separate out certain recyclable material to have been removed, not just one or two items.
Sorting is an acceptable form of treatment. Because if it is carried out properly it will change the characteristics of the waste and meet one of the four strands of the 3rd criteria. Source segregation meets the same criteria and is acceptable treatment. Compaction alone isn’t an acceptable form of treatment as it doesn’t change the characteristics of the waste which will therefore have the same impact on the environment as un-compacted waste.
Waste that was already being treated prior to October 2007 doesn’t need further treatment. Although the legal requirement to pretreat is new, it is not intended to require additional measures provided the treatment option satisfies the 3 point test.

Responsibilities of waste producers

Waste producers should either:

Treat their own waste and provide information about the treatment for subsequent holder; or
Ensure that the waste will be treated by a subsequent holder before it is landfilled

Producers are not obliged to treat their waste themselves and many will simply buy this service from waste contractor, individual producers will need to decide the option that best suits the waste and their circumstances.

If a producer wants to send their waste to landfill they will need to provide confirmation to the landfill operator that the waste has been treated. In some cases, other parties may be involved between the original waste producer and the landfill operator.

It is good practice for the waste producer or holder to always complete a written declaration stating:

The type of treatment; and
If relevant, the amount of waste sorted out for recovery or alternative treatment

This is particularly useful because in the case of doubt the landfill operator is obliged to presume that the waste has not been treated. Regulations require landfill operators to ensure that waste is treated prior to landfill and they have a duty to reject waste unless they are sure it has been treated.

Choosing a treatment options

Waste producers need to consider the following aspects of available treatments:

Cost
Availability
Reliability
Sensitivity to waste composition changes
Technical difficulty

For a waste previously sent to landfill, which must now be treated, it makes sense not just to focus on how to treat it before it is land filled, but to review the overall chain of production and management of the waste.