Green Alliance argues for landfill bans

The Green Alliance is leading a push for banning the disposal of waste wood to landfill.

As I've previously argued here, I think that the costs of a potential ban would outweigh the benefits and that it should therefore be resisted.

Green Alliance points to a research study it conducted on behalf of Defra which GA believes demonstrates that landfill bans are effective in practice. I personally don't see how their case studies are relevant in this case.

Their research looked at general bans on unsorted waste being sent to landfill, as well as bans on separately collected recyclables being sent to landfill. European Directives mean that both of these are in fact already in place here in the UK. The other case they look at is on various forms of restrictions on sending residual waste to landfill, e.g. for combustible waste which might instead be sent for energy recovery.

This is not the same as a ban/restriction imposed on a specific material stream, which I think is likely to be much more costly to enforce. As before, the landfill tax is doing the heavy lifting in terms of driving material out of landfill. Let it do its work.