Landfill Tax increases by £8 per tonne in April

The release of the landfill tax data for the final quarter of 2012 is a timely reminder that from 1 April, the standard rate of landfill tax rises by £8 to £72/tonne.

For an 1100 litre waste container of average 60kgs weight, equates to a rise of 48p to a total of £4.32 just for the tax where the waste goes to landfill.

At the moment, there is one further increase left (taking the tax up to £80 in April 2014) under treasury plans and the waste industry was surprised that the recent budget did not include any indication of future government plans for this tax. Its impact, though, has been unquestionable. The graph below shows the consistent decline in waste to landfill since the tax started set against the standard rate of tax. Last year saw a minor blip as the industry made adjustments in the wake of a statement by HMRC on the classification of trommel fines, but the trend on standard rate inputs has been very firmly down. As we have mentioned in a previous article, last year saw the first set of statistics for municipal waste where the amount of waste landfilled was less than the amount being recycled. But it is not just recycling that has increased, much of the decline has come through the growth in waste to energy capacity and increasingly, as the tax has risen, a recognition by businesses of the need to reduce the amount of waste produced in the first place.