Implementing Scotland’s landfill ban

Abstract

The Scottish Government has committed to end the practice of landfilling biodegradable municipal waste (BMW) by 2025 and to extending the forthcoming ban on disposing of BMW to landfill to include biodegradable non-municipal wastes (BNMW). This assessment considers the national residual waste capacity requirements associated with this. In particular the report provides: • An assessment of whether there is likely to be a gap in the capacity of facilities available within Scotland to treat Scotland’s BMW in 2025 when the ban is implemented. • A high-level summary of the impact of including BNMW within the ban. • Analysis of the impact on Scotland’s GHG emissions with the BMW ban and the extended BNMW ban. • An analysis of the likely calorific value (CV) of residual waste in 2025 under a number of scenarios.