A landfill ban in Scotland could see up to 100 truckloads of waste being moved to England each day due to a lack of incinerators available to meet extra demand.
At the end of this year, the Scottish government will enforce a ban on “black bag” waste from being buried in landfill sites, but not enough energy-from-waste sites will be ready by the 31 December deadline.
Zero Waste Scotland has predicted the “capacity gap” to be around 600,000 tonnes, with some councils approaching rubbish handling operators in England.
The ban was originally due to be enforced in 2021 before being delayed due to the Covid-19 pandemic, but environmental consultants of concluded that hundreds of tonnes of rubbish still have nowhere to go despite the delay.
David Balmer, a waste expert from ERS Remediation, told BBC One’s Disclosure: “You’re looking at the equivalent of between 80 and 100 trucks minimum running seven days a week to take this material to a facility in England or abroad.”
The Scottish government are hoping to increase recycling rates and use more energy-from-waste incinerators, with the ban hoping to reduce the amount of rubbish that needs to be incinerated.
Non-recyclable items such as wood, textiles, paper, and food will be banned from landfill, as it breaks down to produce methane and is around 28 times more potent than carbon dioxide.
However, the short-term impact is likely that emissions will increase, given that a large fleet of vehicles will have to transport the waste to sites as far away as Manchester.
Alasdair Meldrum, director of waste management consultants Albion Environmental, also told the BBC: “We’ve probably not got the trucks and vehicles to actually move it.”
He added: “You’ve got the environmental impact of all that transport, it’s nonsensical, but the people who have invested in incinerators are saying ‘we’ve invested all this money because of the ban’.
“So, we’re stuck in a really hard place.”
In Scotland, there are currently eight operational incinerators, with additional ones currently being built. While they are still responsible for greenhouse gases, they are a third less damaging than the release of methane from landfill sites.
The Scottish government said: “Any export of waste should only ever be viewed as a short-term solution.”
It added that the “vast majority” of councils had alternative measures in place ahead of the landfill ban coming into force, but they will “work closely with local authorities and sector bodies to monitor and review any related issues which may arise as the date of the ban approaches”.
