Holyrood in Edinburgh has restated its commitment to a landfill ban that is planned for 2021 - despite chances that it might be pushed back to 2025.
Claims by a spokesperson for the Scottish Government states that available evidence showed "significant progress" had been made towards meeting the 2021 target, and most councils had either long term or interim solutions in place, despite scepticism. This statement came in the response to a letter wrote to the country's Herald national newspaper - one signed by former senior waste and environmental services staff who work at Scottish Councils. These same people also suggested that the deadline was likely to change.
Those from the councils of:
have claimed in their letter sent on 5 August to the Herald, that they think the delay will be accompanied by a 'fiscal measure'. They have written: "The 2021 landfill biodegradable waste ban illustrates perfectly the laissez-faire attitude of the government, which will over the coming days put the ban date back probably to 2025 (to coincide with the 2025 recycling and landfill target) doubtless with some lame fiscal measure which will not help."
In response, to defend themselves against these comments, the Scottish Government has emphasised that they are "committed to ending the practice of sending biodegradable municipal waste to landfill".
The ban itself was passed under the Waste (Scotland) Regulations SSI 2012/148 and states that no biodegradable municipal waste will be allowed to be sent to landfill sites from 1 January 2021.
There were concerns that both the local authorities and commercial waste operators in Scotland have failed to make adequate preparations for the ban, raised in a Eunomia report to Holyrood back in April. At that time, a Scottish Government spokesperson has said that they remained aware of those challenges but persisted that those affected had been given adequate time to prepare, adding: "It is [...] disappointing that there is uncertainty around the readiness of some councils. Our focus is on working with authorities who do not yet have a solution in place to identify ways in which they can comply with the ban. Further details will be available in due course."
