3. Data collection
3.1 Scope - "collected municipal waste"
Regulation 11 requires local authorities to report data for "collected municipal waste." It is this information that forms the basis of the calculation of the amount of biodegradable municipal waste held by the authority.
The definition in regulation 2(1) is:-
"collected municipal waste" means municipal waste which is recovered or disposed of in pursuance of arrangements made by a waste disposal authority or a waste collection authority;
Both waste disposal authorities and waste collection authorities are mentioned here as local authorities may, at times, be acting exclusively under duties as either one of these.
Collected municipal waste will be all waste for which the council makes arrangements, with the following exceptions:-
- abandoned vehicles and end-of-life vehicles.
- road maintenance waste.
- road sweepings collected by HGV road sweepers that are comprised overwhelmingly of mineral substances such as grit, salt and mineral oils. (Data on this waste should be submitted along with supporting evidence if it is believed to be covered by this exclusion)
- commercial waste that is delivered to council owned or run landfill sites, where the council has no part in the collection arrangements that have led to this delivery. (This also applies in principle to domestic waste delivered to council owned or run landfill sites by third party waste operators, where the council has had no part in the collection arrangements that have led to this delivery. However, if these deliveries are of a significant scale, SEPA and the Scottish Executive should be consulted.)
- industrial waste taken for disposal or treatment separately from any other waste.
- construction and demolition waste, including from refurbishment work, that is collected and taken for disposal or treatment separately from any other waste. Bricks and rubble from households taken to civic amenity ( CA) sites must be included in collected municipal waste.
Industrial waste, construction and demolition waste that is collected with other waste, and all commercial waste that is collected by or on behalf of a council's waste operations should be included in the returns for collected municipal waste.
Waste from caravan sites and charities count as household waste but should only be included in the returns for 'collected municipal waste' where the waste comes into the possession or control of the local authority for recovery or disposal. The baseline data on which Scotland's target has been set, and on which individual council's allocations of allowances have been set, includes these wastes.
For further information about the interaction of the LAS with local authorities' duties with respect to commercial waste, see section 6.1.
In principle, waste dispatched from council owned premises (such as care homes) to specialist contractors should be counted within the scope of collected municipal waste. However, this waste has not generally been included in the Local Authority Waste Arising Survey, and councils generally will have very limited centrally compiled information on the weights involved. Indeed, the weight of waste picked up from such premises may not be recorded as part of existing contracts. In those circumstances where no such data is readily available it is accepted that waste dispatched from council owned premises (such as care homes) to specialist contractors can be excluded for the purposes of the Landfill Allowance Scheme.
3.2 Transfer Stations
Councils in many cases operate transfer stations, or have them operated on their behalf. These facilities will often handle a mixture of domestic, commercial and industrial waste, that might be delivered to the facility by the council itself, by operators working on behalf of the council, by independent waste operators or by a business that has created the waste. It is important to consider the circumstances in which this waste becomes collected municipal waste, and so relevant to the Landfill Allowance Scheme.
Commercial waste will, in many situations, be "municipal waste" in terms of the landfill directive, as it will be similar to household waste. For this reason, all commercial waste under the control of local authorities has to be counted as municipal waste for the purposes of the LAS. Even if commercial waste does not arrive at a transfer station as collected municipal waste, if the local authority has any involvement its progress to final disposal or recovery, it must be deemed to be part of collected municipal waste. Commercial waste that passes through a transfer station can only escape from becoming collected municipal waste if delivered independent of council arrangements to a transfer station that is under full operation and management control of a private company.
For reasons of consistency with other commercial waste arrangements that predated the Waste and Emissions Trading Act, the scheme will in general disregard, for the purposes of the LAS, pre-enactment financial relationships between privately owned transfer stations, local authorities and commercial waste producers who deliver their waste direct to these transfer stations. These arrangements have to fulfil the condition that the council has no physical control over the waste directly or through a third party. This disregard will be maintained for as long as the arrangement between the local authority and the transfer station operator remains materially the same. Local authorities should inform SEPA of individual cases where they intend to exclude data because of this pre-enactment provision.
Industrial waste, so long as it arrives at the transfer station separate from other waste (and so can be accurately measured) should remain as distinct from collected municipal waste. This would also hold for other wastes that we exclude from the scope of collected municipal waste because of their nature, such as roads maintenance waste, which may get mixed with other waste at transfer stations. Although the council is responsible for sending this waste on to landfill, it is not relevant to the measurement at either Regulation 11 or Regulation 14 as it is not municipal waste.
Councils must continue to count as municipal waste that fraction of domestic waste, such as construction and demolition waste collected at civic amenity sites, that is similar in nature to industrial waste.
3.3 Industrial Waste sorted at MRFs
This section considers the conditions under which industrial waste will become municipal waste as a result of being sorted at Materials Recovery Facilities ( MRFs). These facilities go beyond the aims of a pure transfer station for waste, and aim to separate out recyclable fractions of waste, before sending the residual to landfill. Commercial waste sorted at a local authority controlled MRFs will generally be counted as collected municipal waste, as the council will be in control of its despatch to treatment or disposal.
Once a load of mixed industrial waste arriving at a MRF has been mixed and sorted with municipal waste, it will be extremely difficult to identify where the tonnage has gone. Since the measurement of BMW landfilled relies on a mass balance system, this calculation cannot be robust if we do not know where the industrial waste has ended up, as between recyclate and landfill. Therefore, mixed loads of industrial waste would have to be counted as collected municipal waste if they are mixed with other municipal waste in such a way that the industrial waste was not traceable.
Separately collected industrial waste that arrives at MRFs in loads with identified fractions of materials with a clear treatment or disposal destination (for example a load of industrial waste that is 50% construction and demolition waste suitable for reuse in road foundations and 50% mixed metals) can remain separate from the measurement of collected municipal waste.
3.4 MRFs as pre-treatment for industrial and commercial waste accepted at council operated landfill sites
Certain MRFs are co-located with council operated landfill sites, and all industrial and commercial waste arriving at the site passes through the MRF to fulfil pre-treatment requirements under the Landfill (Scotland) Regulations 2003. In these cases, there is a judgement to be made about whether this waste should be counted as collected municipal waste. In some cases, it is possible to regard commercial waste that is delivered to the facility, where the council has no part in the collection arrangements that have led to this delivery, and all separately collected industrial waste, as being accepted at the landfill site and so excluded from the scope of municipal waste as discussed at 3.1. Alternatively, in other cases, the council can be seen as effectively taking control of this waste and thus taking responsibility for its recovery or disposal as collected municipal waste, with the exception of identifiable industrial waste.
In general, the judgements of how this waste is counted will follow the recording of this waste in the baseline period for the Landfill Allowance Scheme. Where this commercial and industrial waste is excluded from the data for collected municipal waste, the council will have to be able to demonstrate the reliability of the data it submits for diversion achieved from the collected municipal waste put through the MRF.
3.5 Data Collection
The data for monitoring the Landfill Allowance Scheme shall be collected by SEPA on the WasteDataFlow system.
The Regulations set a limit of 3 months, beyond which a penalty for non submission of data could be imposed. SEPA may set an operational deadline for the submission of data within the 3 month limit, with due regard to the state of development of the data systems. Local authorities should take reasonable steps to comply with an operational deadline.
In terms of regulation 14 of the regulations, 5 months after the end of the scheme year, SEPA has to provide a draft reconciliation for the year. SEPA and the Executive shall set a final deadline for the inclusion of data, and any variations to data, in consideration of the reconciliation for that scheme year.
SEPA's Environmental Information Unit will check the data, and look for any anomalous movements or omissions, and seek further explanation. (see next section for issues on establishing the assumptions for the calculation of BMW diversion).
3.6 Data Audit
Local authorities are public bodies, and have general duties to comply with the law and to report accurate data. There is no need for a routine general auditing procedure to be employed in order to obtain data that reflects the council's best understanding of their position.
Local authorities are expected to keep a register of waste transfer notes and receipts from landfill operators and reprocessors that can be inspected by SEPA.
SEPA may undertake occasional random audits, to ensure the overall validity of the data. SEPA may also undertake an audit of a local authority's data in circumstances where there are reasons to believe that systematic and substantial errors have affected the data submission of individual councils.