After discussions with the European Commission, the UK government's environmental arm, DEFRA, has accepted that the calculations used in regard to EU Landfill Directive targets are currently too focused on waste collected by local authorities. A new approach, which includes much more commercial waste, will be used in future to bring the UK into line with other Member States.
Greater convergence between the management of commercial and domestic waste is needed to ensure that the environmental impacts of all waste are taken into account. The new approach to municipal waste is based on the European Waste Catalogue and will basically mean that a lot more waste will be counted as municipal waste. This will mean the baseline on which landfill diversion targets were set for 2010, 2013 and 2020 will need to be amended. DEFRA remains confident that the UK will meet its current 2010 targets.
