The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) has released its latest figures on municipal waste for 2006/07 reporting that Scotland has met its domestic target for landfill of biodegradeable municipal waste and the recycling rate continues to increase.

Scottish local authorities have reduced the amount of biodegradable municipal waste sent to landfill to 1.471 million tonnes, exceeding the expectation of the Scottish Ministers‘‘ targets. The recycling rate has continued to increase to 28.4%; up 4% from last year; and municipal waste growth has reduced from around 2% last year to 1%. Although the news is good, there is still more work to do if we are to achieve our first target set within the National Waste Plan of 0% growth by 2010.

SEPA along with the local authorities have worked in partnership to make the figures available under a new reporting system. This is the first full year that the WasteDataFlow system has been used and the changeover allows a more transparent and efficient way of reporting. Although this has been a difficult learning curve for all involved, it will allow for more detailed figures being available at an earlier stage. The municipal waste figures can be viewed at: http://www.sepa.org.uk/nws/data/returns.htm

The release of the latest figures coincides with the SEPA‘‘s Area Waste Plan (AWP) Annual Reports for 2006/07 and the Scottish Government‘‘s Waste Summit.

SEPA‘‘s Waste and Resources Unit Manager, John Ferguson 1said: "It‘‘s encouraging to see that Scotland is reducing the waste we send to landfill and continues to increase recycling efforts. But we still have a long way to go meet future targets.

The area waste plan annual reports can be viewed at:

http://www.sepa.org.uk/nws/guidance/annual_reports0607/index.htm

Scottish local authorities submit recycling data to SEPA on a quarterly basis via the on line system WasteDataFlow. The overall results are available at: http://www.sepa.org.uk/nws/data/returns.htm

§ WasteDataFlow provides data for monitoring of the Landfill Allowance Scheme and has helped to simplify reporting arrangements for local authorities, replacing the existing annual Local Authority Waste Arisings Survey (LAWAS) and the Landfill Allowance Scheme Quarterly Monitoring Return (LASQMR).

§ Scottish Ministers target for waste going to landfill was reduced from 1.8 in 2005/06 to 1.5 million tones in 2006/07

§ Municipal Solid Waste arisings was 3,437,046 tonnes and a total of 2,398,433 tonnes was sent to landfill.

§ Recycling rate for 2005/06 was 24.4%.

§ The main purpose of the data collected is to monitor progress towards reaching the UK‘‘s targets for the landfilling of biodegradable municipal waste (BMW) and the Scottish Ministers‘‘ targets for the recycling and composting of municipal waste. Through this form Scottish local authorities are asked every three months to report data on recycling, composting and disposal activities