A summary of the types of waste managed by permitted waste management facilities in 2010
This information will be useful for local authorities, planning bodies and businesses involved in planning for future waste facilities.
These pages form one of a series of annual reports summarising our waste data.
Future reports will seek to breakdown the data to a more detailed site type level whilst still representing in the format provided now to enable its use as a time series.
You can download a report summarising data for England and Wales for 2010 from the “downloads” box on the right in pdf format. Detailed information at both national and former regional planning level can be accessed from the data tables page. Former regional planning level is still used so that data can be compared with that from previous years.
Key Facts
At the end of 2010 in England and Wales there were:
- 497 operational permitted landfills either meeting the requirements of the Landfill Directive, operating subject to an appeal against refusal or to an agreed landfill extension.
The following had an environmental permit in force:
- 3,609 transfer operations
- 1,625 treatment facilities
- 2,546 metal recycling sites
- 103 waste incinerators accepting waste from off-site sources
During 2010 regulated waste facilities in England and Wales managed nearly 140 million tonnes of waste. Of this:
- 45.9 million tonnes were landfilled
- 41.4 million tonnes were transferred, before final disposal or recovery
- 32.4 million tonnes were treated
- 14.7 million tonnes were handled through metal recycling facilities
- 5.9 million tonnes were incinerated
At the end of 2010 there were:
- 602 million cubic metres of available landfill capacity, with 69 per cent of this available at merchant non-hazardous sites
- 17.5 million cubic metres available at hazardous waste sites only
- eight years of landfill life left at sites for non-hazardous wastes in England and Wales, at 2010 input rates
During 2010 in England and Wales over 3.7 million tonnes of hazardous waste were managed, generated from nearly 160,000 businesses and industry, with:
- 14 per cent landfilled
- 25 per cent transferred, before final disposal or recovery
- 21 per cent treated
- 30 per cent recycled, recovered or re-used
- 9 per cent incinerated
Note some movements will be counted more than once in this dataset, as the same waste will be go on for further treatment, recovery or disposal after transfer.
Key Trends
Waste to landfill has decreased minimally between 2009 and 2010. It fell by less than two per cent between 2009 and 2010 and has fallen by around 46 per cent since 2000. One of the principal reasons is the implementation of the Landfill Directive. Many older landfill sites that did not meet the stringent requirements of the Directive had to close by July 2009 at the latest and diversion targets for biodegradable municipal waste to landfill increase year on year. Also the slow down in economic growth in 2010 is associated with the minimal decrease in waste generated.
Remaining capacity at landfill sites fell by just over two per cent during 2010. Overall since 2000 landfill capacity has fallen by 21 per cent.
Inputs through permitted transfer facilities decreased by one per cent between 2009 and 2010.
Overall inputs through permitted treatment facilities have increased by over 18 per cent. The main increase was through sites for physical and biological treatment. There was also an increase of around two per cent (81,000 tonnes) in the waste going through composting plants.
Hazardous waste
The Environment Agency is required to monitor registered hazardous waste movements. The data published here is a summary of these movements. The same waste may be moved between multiple facilities and each separate movement is recorded. This double counting should be taken into account when using this data.
The hazardous waste managed in England and Wales has decreased since 2004 by 30 per cent. The majority of the decrease is due to the reduction in liquid inputs to one treatment facility on Teesside over the last few years.
In 2010 hazardous waste:
- management decreased by 16 per cent to over 3.7 million tonnes
- landfilled decreased by eight per cent to just over half a million tonnes
- treatment decreased by 48 per cent
- recycled/re-used increased by 11 per cent
You can access more detailed information on hazardous waste movements submitted by operators by visiting our data tables pages.
Permitted Estate
You can access details on the numbers of permitted waste management facilities for England and Wales, from our data tables page.
Although a site may have an environmental permit, it may not be operational in any given year. These data tables show the numbers of sites with permits and those that accepted waste in 2010 as 2 separate figures.
Other Facilities
Information for some site categories like pet cemeteries, in-house storage facilities and mobile plant is not summarised in these pages. However data is available on request.
Notified Waste Shipments 2010
2010 data on notified waste shipments was not ready for publication when these pages were published. Details will be added here later in 2011.
Improving waste information
Permitted site operators can submit their waste returns data to us via our web-site. Information on how to do this can be obtained from the National Operator Returns team:
We intend to provide future reports at a more detailed and useful site level category e.g. anaerobic digestion, mechanical biological treatment. We will also still provide data in the original format so you can compare data from the last 5 years.
Detailed 2010 waste returns and hazardous waste data interrogators are available now. See the More Information page for details on how to obtain them and how much they cost.
Do you want to find out more?
Detailed summary information is available on the data tables page in Excel format.
Information about the data, assumptions made in the collation and presentation and what is not covered can be found on our About the data page.
